Maggie Mandal
My name is Maggie Mandal, and this is my first year teaching at Sage Creek High School!
I grew up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and according to my mom, I’ve been trying to teach since I learned to talk. It took me a bit longer to realize my calling.
After graduating from Princeton University in 2013 with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, I spent two years as a writer/editor at a dance magazine in NYC and another two years completing a Master of Arts in English and American Literature at New York University. It was during my time at NYU that my need to be a secondary English teacher crystalized. I enjoyed the intellectual rigor of my studies, but it was my side job as a high school writing tutor that felt the most authentic. My personal academic success could not compare to the feeling of helping a student discover their voice. I watched classic texts from Toni Morrison to Shakespeare take on new life in my students’ eyes, as together, we discovered ways of close-reading text evidence to express their unique theses. I found myself beginning to daydream about having a classroom full of students.
In the Fall of 2017, I married my college sweetheart and moved to Florida’s panhandle for him to begin his training as a pilot for the Marine Corps. While in Florida, I completed my Master of Arts in Teaching and earned my Secondary English Credential through the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education’s Distance Learning program. After graduating from the program in the Spring of 2019, I was hired to join the English faculty at Milton High School in Milton, Florida. While brief, my time at MHS helped solidify my love for this profession. I have always believed in the therapeutic powers of reading and writing, but I experienced them firsthand with my students. Together, we discovered how literature could offer the space to confront key challenges in our world—past, present, and future. I watched my students use the tools of ELA to access these junctures and to present authentic questions about life.
My husband and I moved to California this year so that he could continue his training as a USMC Cobra pilot. We brought a little bit of Milton with us—our 4-year-old Siberian Husky rescue, Athena, who is my whole world. While it’s a strange time to move to a new place, we’ve enjoyed exploring the beautiful outdoors, taking our little girl on hikes throughout the area. My favorite thing about being a teacher/military spouse is that it gives me the opportunity to really know the community in which we live. You (my students) are my ambassadors to Carlsbad!
While this year will bring its challenges, I believe that we will continue to shine in the English classroom (whether virtual or in person). Reading and writing give us the opportunity to escape, to connect, to expand our capacity for empathy, and to access new ways of knowing and being. Together, we will work to read critically, to ask questions, and to reject passive consumption of information.
This year, I hope to empower students to construct their own meaning as we read the world together.
“Reading words, and writing them, must come from the dynamic movement of reading the world.” — Paulo Freir
Princeton University
B.A. English Literature
New York University
M.A. English and American Literature
University of Southern California
Rossier School of Education
M.A. Teaching
Secondary English Teaching Credential (CA)
Sage Creek High School - Carlsbad, CA - 2020-present
Honors English 1 and 2
Milton High School - Milton, FL - 2018-2020
English 2 Gen. Ed. & Inclusion (2019-2020)
Honors English 1, English 11 Gen. Ed. & Inclusion, English 12 Gen. Ed. (Student Teacher - 2018-2019)
Practice Makes Perfect - New York, NY - 2017
Summer Teaching Fellow
4th and 5th grade Reading, Writing, & Social Studies
One with NYU - New York, NY - 2015-2016
English and Spanish Tutor
