Ms. Symone Jenkins is an English teacher for 9th and 10th grade at West Po. Her love for teaching English roots from being able to see each student’s progress in writing overtime and seeing how far her students come from the beginning to the end of the school year.
Ms. Jenkins’s first two years of college were at Northern Virginia Community College where she got her associates degree. She later went to George Mason for her Bachelors in Arts and English and then her Masters in secondary education English.
Ms. Jenkins didn’t always want to become a teacher, but she knew she wanted to work with and help kids. She started by going to school to be a pediatric nurse, but she found out that she was required to take 3 sections of chemistry and noticed that she couldn’t see herself in that profession for the rest of her life, so she then looked towards teaching. Reading and writing had always been her strong suit, so she switched her major and never looked back and is glad she made that decision.
“I was going to school to be a pediatric nurse, still with kids, still helping kids, and later I had a reflection, do I want to keep doing this? It just wasn’t something I could see myself waking up every single day for the rest of my life and being content. That’s when I looked into teaching, switched my major, and never looked back,” Ms. Jenkins said.
Ms. Jenkins chose and loves West Potomac because she had always been familiar with the area. She went to Annandale and Falls Church High Schools, and while she was in her masters program she was required to have experience hours to get her degree, so she started completing some of her hours at West Po. As she was doing her hours, she found that she loved the school.
“As I started doing my hours here, I fell in love with the population of the students, we have a very diverse community here,” Ms. Jenkins said “Not just that, but also the welcoming English department here.”
For hobbies, Ms. Jenkins is a coach for volleyball that practices out of the Lee district rec center. Other hobbies include hiking and baking, specifically cookies.
Ms. Jenkins recently won the 2024 outstanding secondary school new teacher award, and it makes her happy that she has made an impact. She takes it as a confidence booster for her future in the profession.
“It makes me ecstatic and happy that I’ve made an impact because that’s the main goal going into this career,” Ms. Jenkins said about the award “I think this award is putting me on the right path for my future, it can only go up from here.”
