Ms. Zora Woodsum, now in her sixth year as a teacher, has joined the English Department, where she is teaching both Lit Comp I and Lit Comp II. “I love books and love to yap about books,” she explained. “I couldn’t sit at a desk all day in a corporate job.”
Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, she was adopted and raised in Vermont. She loved reading and writing throughout her childhood, and in high school, Ms. Woodsum knew she “couldn’t make a career of something she didn’t care about.” After graduating college, she was a full time house faculty at a school in Northern California. Then, she joined Concord Academy as an English teacher. Her favorite books to teach include Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass.
English teacher Ms. Linda Derezinski, who also teaches Lit Comp II, described Ms. Woodsum as someone who is “super invested in teaching writing. We really value writing in the English department.” Ms. Derezinski added, “She’s got a rapport with kids. … She genuinely likes being in the classroom with kids. She really cares about the content she’s teaching.” Her student, Serenity Wolk ‘28 expressed, “Right away you can tell she is a very warm person. You can tell that she is there for you.”
Fellow new teacher Mr. Kevin Jiang, in the Math Department, enjoys working with Ms. Woodsum, saying, “Even though we teach different subjects, there’s so much to gain from collaborating and trading ideas.”
One of Ms. Woodsum’s main goals for her students is to get used to the words “second draft,” meaning that no writing is considered finished, which takes away the stress of writing. She thinks of writing as a way to express yourself and your ideas. “I want to feel confident in their ability to advocate for themselves,” she says. She also shows humor in her class like putting an emoji when students use the word “show” to help her students find different terms of the commonly used word in writing.
Ms. Woodsum teaches her students a word of the day every class, which they then need to use in their daily writing. She also offers an extra point when students use one of their daily words in their essay. Serenity says that the word of the day is “a great way to get my brain flowing on how to articulate my words.” She has a love for teaching, or as she would call it, an amaranthine for teaching, using the first word of the day for Lit Comp II.
Ms. Woodsum also runs the evening college essay writing lab and is an advisor for SHADES. Ms. Woodsum thinks high school is about building confidence and talking to other people. “I really believe in kindness. Kindness is what makes everything work.”