It’s always great to hear that new teachers love where they work because of the communities and the connections that are built between the student and the teacher. Mrs. Danielle Clagg, one of the newest teachers at Oakdale High School, began at OHS during the 2023 fall semester and has been loving Oakdale and its community.
“So far I love it, the people are nice, the kids are nice. I really enjoy it,” said Mrs. Clagg.
While in college, Mrs. Clagg was helping her friend’s kid with homework and she discovered her passion. ”Honestly I was helping my friend’s son with his homework one day [when] I was in college, and she said ‘You should be a teacher.’ I thought about it and I was like ‘I’ll try it,’ so I registered for my first education class and just stayed with it,” Mrs. Clagg shared,
“She encourages you to do extra work,” one of her students, sophomore Ajay Vinod, described her teaching. Encouragement is one of the many qualities that make Mrs. Clagg a good teacher, because she inspires students to finish their work and will help in any way possible for her students to be able to graduate and to feel accomplished.
”Mrs. Clagg did make English fun,” another one of her students, sophomore Brandon Mogus, stated, explaining that English was not their favorite subject but having a teacher that makes English fun for someone that doesn’t like it very much is amazing to hear. That helps the teacher know what methods of teaching to use for next year.
At Oakdale Mrs. Clagg teaches freshmen through juniors, but explains, “I’ve taught 6th, 7th, and 8th.”
Before she worked at Oakdale “I used to work at Parkview High School in Loudoun County, Virginia,” commented Mrs. Clagg.
When Mrs. Clagg worked at Parkview, it was far from her house. The reason that she chose to interview for Oakdale was because it was a shorter distance. Mrs. Clagg mentions, ”It’s closer to home. It took me an hour and a half to get home everyday, so I [looked] into Frederick which is 20 minutes from my house.”
“I’ve taught in Maryland [as a middle school teacher] for a very long time, and then my husband got a promotion to Virginia, so we moved. When I was interviewing for jobs, there weren’t that many middle school positions open,” described Mrs. Clagg. “So I interviewed for middle and high school, and that’s how I ended up in high school. When I came and interviewed in Frederick, I predominantly just interviewed for high school because I like high school.”
When asked about what she majored in college, Mrs. Clagg says, ”I chose to major in English because I enjoyed reading so I thought I would try it when I started college and then I went with the English and the education like a double feature.”
But surprisingly, her favorite subject was not English, but science and Mrs. Clagg almost became a science teacher instead!
”My favorite subject in school is probably science because of the experiments and things like that. After I got my English degree I went back and got a degree in biology and chemistry, so I have taught science too,” noted Mrs. Clagg. “To be in the education program you were allowed to get one B and that was it, and I was a C student in science so I stuck with English to get my degree.”
The main reason why Clagg wanted to teach was because of the students. She cares for them and when it’s time for them to graduate she’ll feel so proud of them for accomplishing some of the toughest years her students had to go through but also for her because she’d know that her teaching was one of the reasons they graduated.
Mrs. Clagg expressed, ”I look forward to the looks on the students’ faces that I’ve had at graduation, the excitement. That’s why I did this [teaching].”
