Acclaimed educator Monica Washington is named National Education Association’s Director of Teacher Quality
By Ellen Orr

Over Monica Washington’s 20-year career as an English teacher, one activity she developed stands out as particularly revolutionary: “Pie Chart of My Perspective.”

Monica would present a given topic or issue and then ask her teenage students, “Where do you get your information? What gives you your belief? What percentage is family? What percentage is reading? What percentage are your friends?” The exercise changed the culture of her classroom.

“Some of the students would say, ‘Oh, [my perspective is] 100% me,’” Monica recalled. “I’d say, ‘No, it’s not,’ and we’d think through that. And probably the percentages were wrong, but it was helping them make that shift and realize that everybody has a different pie chart. So then, in discussions with each other, they would say things like, ‘Oh, well, it’s okay. Don’t worry about so-and-so; don’t get on her back or whatever. She just has a different pie chart than you.’ Figuring out how to teach them that took me a while, but once I did, it was magical.”

A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Monica taught for ten years in Memphis before moving to Texarkana with her husband, Ricky, who is a Texarkana native. She taught at Texas High School from 2007 to 2017, serving as a department chair for several of those years. In 2013, she was named THS Teacher of the Year. The following year, she was named the Texas State Secondary Teacher of the Year. To date, she is the only Texarkana teacher to have received the award, at either the elementary or secondary level, since its inception in 1957.

The Texas State Teachers Association honored Monica for her induction into the National Teachers Hall of Fame. photo courtesy of TSTA.

The award, granted by the Texas Association of School Administrators, enabled her to travel throughout the country and meet other dedicated teachers. “I had the opportunity to practice training other teachers and mentoring,” she said. “That really sparked another little bug in me that I didn’t know I had. Even as a first-year, second-year teacher, I always tried to be supportive of other teachers, but [the National Teacher of the Year Program] gave me an opportunity to do it in a more formal way.”

Monica intended to stay in the classroom long-term. “In my mind, I was going to teach [in the classroom] for 40 years,” she said. However, in 2017, a fellow member of the National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY) sent her a job listing with a company called BetterLesson, which provides professional development and teacher coaching to districts throughout the country. Monica worked for them for over five years, providing individualized support to teachers and helping districts develop high-quality professional development for their schools. In her first three years with the company, Monica was coaching around 50 teachers per year.

“[BetterLesson] gave me an opportunity to coach teachers in all these different districts, one-on-one,” she said. “I would say, ‘Show me what you don’t know how to do. Let’s look at your papers. Let’s do all the things.’ I would always say to them, ‘I’m your person.’”

Outside of BetterLesson, Monica facilitated trainings and presented keynote speeches, connected to opportunities through NNSTOY. She seized chances not only to teach but also to learn; as a result, she discovered a desire to work in education policy.

“I remember, as a first-year teacher, thinking, ‘[Policy is] not my lane. I’m teaching. There are other people who will make sure that things are great for kids,’” she recalled. “But then I got a chance to go talk to people at the Department of Ed and the White House, and through all of these different experiences, I realized, ‘Oh, people have other agendas.’ So then I wanted to know how I, as an educator, could put my voice in-play for policies that are beneficial for kids and beneficial for teachers.”

In a move that “people thought was crazy,” Monica left BetterLesson to be a policy fellow through NNSTOY. Taking a pay cut, she worked with three other fellows to “learn all the policies,” she explained. “Our goal was to support other teachers who didn’t have time to do that, to help them understand what’s happening, what’s changing in their states. How can you still teach in a way that is beneficial for kids? So we developed tools and resources and workshops, and we talked to legislators, and we talked to the media. We wrote op-eds and blogs, just trying to get the word out—about policies that are good for students and teachers, and policies that are terrible.”

During this time, in 2023, Monica was inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame; only five educators per year receive the honor.

After the 18-month fellowship, Monica began teaching at REACH University. REACH enables school employees like custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, and classroom aides to earn teaching degrees while retaining their jobs. Aspiring teachers train at their current places of employment, take classes at night, and commit to teaching at their schools for a set number of years.

In early 2025, the National Education Agency (NEA) posted a job listing for the Director of Teacher Quality.

“They had been trying to find the right person, and with all the layoffs at the Department of Ed, they were being flooded with applications—like 300 per week,” Monica said. “But they were trying to find a unicorn—somebody who had a bunch of teaching experience, who also knew how to coach, who also understood policy, who also understood equity.” When a friend from NNSTOY told Monica that she was the person for the job, she balked—but after reading the listing, she thought, “Oh, that does kind of sound like me.”

A representative from the NEA actually reached out to Monica before she could even apply. Her name was added to a short list of chosen candidates, and after multiple rounds of interviews, she was offered the job. The organization had intended for the director to be based in DC, but for Monica, they made an exception; she will travel to her Washington office for multiple days each month but otherwise work remotely.

Monica’s team supports “everybody who touches education”—aspiring teachers, current teachers, and retired teachers. “It’s a huge job,” she said, “and I have no idea what I’m doing yet.”

In 2014, the NEA Foundation presented Monica with a California Casualty Award for Teaching Excellence. photo courtesy of TSTA

Her first aim is to uncover where teachers are and aren’t engaged with or being served by the NEA, which is the nation’s largest labor union, with over 3 million members. One region with very low NEA membership? Texarkana.

Monica recalled a local teacher once asking her for help with an issue they were having. Monica reached out to the Texas NEA office in Austin, and they helped the teacher in need. “After that, I asked [the teacher], ‘Why don’t you join [the NEA]?’ And she was like, ‘Well, I don’t know how I feel about being a part of a union, but I appreciate your help,’” she shared. “There’s a perception that it’s this machine that’s controlling everything, but when you go behind that perceived curtain, there are actually just educators who support other educators.”

People who have strong opinions about education would be well served by Monica’s “Pie Chart of My Perspective” activity.

Monica was inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame on March 27, 2023. photo by truth dukes (tisd)

“Before we attach ourselves to a negative perception, we should take the opportunity to go and look in two or three more places to verify what we heard,” she said. “Where else did you hear it? Are those credible [sources]? If you haven’t been in a school and haven’t talked to teachers about what’s hard, do it—have a conversation. The sensational news is just that—it’s sensational. But all over the place, there are educators who are showing up with heart—and in many cases, those people are the reason that kids are okay. Just take a couple more steps to see what is real, and know that it’s okay if you change your mind about something. Look for opportunities to prove something negative wrong.

“Of course, you can probably point to one or two people who should have been gone yesterday, who don’t really have their hearts in it,” she continued, “but your vast majority of teachers and principals are working so hard. It is a job that does not fit neatly within a work day; it bleeds into the weekend, it bleeds into the evening. It bleeds into your pockets when you’re, you know, buying prom dresses and feeding kids. These are the human beings behind every insult that we make about public education, human beings who get up every day to support other people’s kids, and who love doing that, who dedicated their lives to doing that.”

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