Total Awe of a Teaching Hero, @Othello88, For His Leadership Last Night. I Want to Learn More

I had the great honor of hosting Westhill High School Teacher, Dave Wooley, in an Invitational Leadership Institute a few year's back. In his interview for that program, he busted out with a verse about 9/11 and the loss of his father that I will never forget.

Fast forward to his summer experience where he composed a piece called "Walls," which was a critique of a newly-elected president's immigration policies (and a response to Rick Shaefer's artwork - Refugee Trilogy). I was sold. We're both hard-working fellas who love what we do and can get emotional with our writing.

I've loved Dave so much that I hired him two summers in a row to co-instruct Project Citizen , a federally funded summer camp to diversify argumentative writing to youth from high needs schools. Dave and I, as well as others on our team, have presented several times at national conferences and his talent always wins the audience. He's a hip-hop artist and uses the genre to connect with his students in Stamford.

Last night, however, Dave Wooley dropped the intellect. It's not just a craft - creating rhythms and rhymes to tell the stories he wishes to express. No, it's an educational journey and he knows what he's talking about. He lived the rise of Hip Hop as a Staten Island Kid and his music career (as well as teaching) has been aligned with the real-estate, cultural, and artistic evolution of hip-hop as a genre. He's a reader, a thinker, and a doer - so his presentation during a Black Lives Matter course was extremely well received.

I wasn't able to stay for the whole thing because I had other obligations, but I found myself making mental notes from the knowledge he was dropping. Yes, he performed (and I've seen him master that), but he also provided historical context, passionate argumentation, and tremendous evidence for why he does what he does.

He is a National Writing Project gem and I couldn't be prouder of calling him an accomplice, a neighbor, a teacher scholar, and friend.

I'm heading into my Tuesday knowing I'm a better man because of him. His students are lucky, as are his sons (and my colleague who I also adore).

Here's to Dave Wooley and the man he is for all of us. He is someone we all can learn from.