Karen Aylward '99

"At Boston College, they gave us a lot of specifics on curriculum and methodologies and everything I learned there was really up to date, so I was able to jump right in with my colleagues at the school, right out of college."

Profession: Teacher, Brighton High School

Karen Coyle Aylward graduated from Boston College in 1999 and three months later, became a full-time teacher at nearby Brighton High School. Just five years after that, she became a teacher of teachers, working with her colleagues at Brighton to develop themselves professionally and raise their own standards, while continuing in the classroom herself. She says LSOE prepared her in specific ways for this accelerated career track.

In 2005, Aylward applied for and received status as a National Board Certified Teacher, a prestigious, voluntary certification program sponsored by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Since then, with help from LSOE professor Audrey Friedman, she has taught classes at the school to help introduce other teachers at Brighton High to the rigorous application process.

In 2009, Aylward was honored with a Boston Educator of the Year Award, partly for her role in an intervention program that led to higher rates of student success on MCAS exams at Brighton High. She has continued to learn from Boston College, taking graduate classes at LSOE in educational administration, ethics, and other areas.

And now, Aylward, who received her master's degree in school leadership from Harvard, is teaching a class titled "Reading and Special Education Instruction for Secondary and Middle School Students," taken by juniors majoring in secondary education at Boston College.