Regina “Gina” D’Alessandro didn’t set out to teach at E.L. Haynes. It came down to a simple, practical choice: one school wanted her to split time across six grades. E.L. Haynes offered her one. She picked the easier path.

Seven years later, she’d tell you it was the best decision she never planned to make.

Her why runs deeper than a scheduling preference. Gina grew up watching her grandmother — a woman from Mexico with two master’s degrees — not be taken seriously because of her accent and limited English. That stayed with her. When she found her way into multilingual education, it wasn’t a career calculation. It was personal. She wanted to open doors for kids the way no one had for her grandmother.

Now she does that every day with second graders — six and seven-year-olds who walk in, as Gina puts it, “a lot more baby-like than you’d think.” She reframes every fall, reminding herself to meet them where they are: still figuring out self-reliance, still needing someone in their corner. Still, without question, funny and cute and absolutely worth the work.

Her approach to building that trust is quiet and specific. When she spots a new student hovering at the edge of the room on the first day — the shy one, the overwhelmed one — she goes to them. Takes them to the library. Talks about summer, favorite colors, and her cat. Then she introduces them to one other student. Just one. And watches them find their footing from there.

“Eventually they feel comfortable enough to be themselves in front of you,” she says. “And then they can be themselves in front of their peers.”

Haynes has given her room to grow into that kind of teacher. She came from teaching in China, where classrooms were silent and teacher-directed. Learning to teach in a DC second grade required a full recalibration — of her patience, her strategies, her whole sense of what a learning environment could sound like. Leadership gave her the same grace she now gives her students. She hasn’t forgotten that.

What would she whisper to herself on day one? You’re going to stay here a lot longer than you think. And it’s going to be the best thing ever.