Careers in Education Panel
Dave Goldfarb D ’93 began teaching high school social studies at West Potomac High School in Virginia, then moved to Falls Church and Chantilly high schools. He then enrolled in the two-year Harvard University School Leadership Program where he was assigned to a Boston inner city school. Thereafter he returned to northern Virginia as assistant principal of a high school in Reston, where he also taught a course in “The Theory of Knowledge.” From there he took the job of principal at highly successful suburban Fairfax High School, with a student population of 2800 and ranked as the nation’s 201st best high school in 2011 and #10 in the state today, on the heels of a widely respected and effective principal. His former principal said of him, “Outside of his family, nothing means more to him than educating children. He is one of the most dedicated, intelligent and caring educators I’ve come in contact with in my 28 years [in education].” Dave stays in close touch with the department, opening his school to department faculty for research collection, and attending Instructional Rounds and faculty meetings while he is in New Hampshire on vacation.
Matthew Deninger, D’01, Ed.M., is the Planning and Implementation Coordinator in the Office of Planning and Research at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. He helped to establish and currently leads the agency’s delivery unit: a performance management team that provides planning, analytical, and implementation support for the Commissioner’s highest priority initiatives. Mr. Deninger has over 15 years of experience in education as a high school English teacher, athletics coach, researcher, and, for the last ten years at the Department, as a district liaison, policy analyst, and project manager. He sits on the Board of Directors for the Massachusetts School Building Authority as the Commissioner’s designee. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in English from Dartmouth College and a Master’s degree in Educational Policy and Management from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.
Mandy Bean, Director of Teacher Education Program at Dartmouth. Prior to pursuing her doctorate degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she taught elementary school in both Virginia and North Carolina for fourteen years. In addition to teaching the core curriculum, she focused much of her teaching on heightening students’ problem-solving skills, engaging them in project based learning and supporting their developing understandings of diversity. Furthermore, she have been privileged to work with novice teachers in several different capacities, including in her work as the facilitator of a blended discourse community of novice teachers as they discussed their problems of practice. This past March, she became the Director of the Teacher Education Program and Instructor in the Elementary Teacher Education Program at Dartmouth. Her objective as a teacher educator is to facilitate scholarly conversations with pre-service teachers as they make connections from their academic coursework to the practical, hands-on field of teaching.
Danise Olague is a first grade teacher at the Bernice A. Ray School in Hanover, NH. Danise was born and raised in San Francisco, CA and attended University of California, Berkeley where she earned her B.A. in Ethnic Studies. After college, Danise worked as an intern teacher at Town School for Boys of San Francisco and earned her multiple subject teaching credential at the Bay Area Teacher Training Institute. She then went on to teach first grade at Marin Country Day School, an independent K-8 school, and also taught under served middle school students at the college-access summer program, Aim High. Before starting at the Ray School, Danise worked as the Service and Education Coordinator for the William Jewett Tucker Foundation at Dartmouth College.