Angela Moon

From attending Lake Braddock High School to teaching at Robinson Secondary School, Angela Moon is no stranger to the Northern Virginia area. This fall, she started her first year in-person at CHS as a special education social studies teacher, having previously joined midway through last year.

How did you get into teaching?

I had a couple jobs beforehand that related really heavily to teaching, and I was in and out of Fairfax County Public Schools quite a bit. [However,] I was able to get into teaching through an unusual route. [Instead of] going to college first then getting a teaching job, I did it by getting a job first then getting into college. So when the opportunity came up, I really wanted to take it. I really liked working with students and I grew up in this area, so I wanted to work here.

Who were your favorite teachers growing up, and how did they influence your teaching style?

A lot of my teachers were good in different ways. Some of my teachers were memorable because they were very kind, [and] some of them were memorable because they were extremely smart or taught me things that I had never known before. So I try to incorporate little bits and pieces of what I’ve learned from them.

Why did you decide to teach social studies?

Especially with U.S. history, I think it’s just important to learn about the history of the country we’re in. We’re learning about our history, and some people don’t even know it’s their history until we get into it.

What’s your favorite unit to teach and why?

I think some of the later units are really interesting because then it really starts to become applicable to us, [such as] learning about the history of the civil rights movement or the suffrage movement. With transgender rights being revoked or the Black Lives Matter movement, they’re just a continuation of all of that.

What are some activities or projects that you do in your class?

Once we get to the later units, it gets nice to tie it back to our own lives. Sometimes I’ll tell kids to ask their family about [their] family history. When did you come to America? How does your story reflect a lot about what we learned about immigrants? Or, how does it all relate together the past and the present? When we think of olden times, we think [that] it doesn’t really affect us now, but it does.

What is your goal as a teacher?

My goal is to connect with the kids. As much as content is important, I feel like the connection is just as important. Kids don’t want to learn from someone they don’t like.