Joining the Family Business of Teaching

By GRACE GAGLIANO

English teacher Ms. Kali Muscarella displayed her capabilities to the Jericho community last year while serving as a leave replacement. Now teaching in both high school and middle school, Ms. Muscarella has become a student favorite. 

Prior to working at Jericho, Ms. Muscarella attended college at SUNY Geneseo and worked at Brentwood High School. Ms. Muscarella’s inspiration for teaching comes from her family. She said, “I wanted to become a teacher because a lot of my family are teachers.”

Her mother and stepfather were teachers and Ms. Muscarella noticed the differences they made during their careers. She said, “They’ve always been great role models and I love getting to see how they impacted other people, so I wanted to do the same.”

From a young age, Ms. Muscarella always knew she wanted to impact children’s lives. She said, “I wanted to be an occupational therapist at first because I knew I wanted to do something in the educational field and help children grow, but it wasn’t my strong suit.” 

That’s when she chose teaching.

Ms. Muscarella wanted to work at Jericho because of the good support system and the emphasis on social-emotional learning (SEL). She said, “My old school didn’t put an emphasis on the SEL concept and it showed because the students just acted out a lot because they were not being given the tools they needed.” 

Ms. Muscarella likes more engaging and interactive learning as opposed to long lectures. She said, “I always like to involve you guys in the learning. I don’t like lecturing as much, and I like it when students are able to do work as a group and build relationships with friends.” 

Many of Ms. Muscarella’s students enjoy class time with her. Freshman Dhriri P. said, “I like how she organizes her assignments. It helps me learn a lot in her class. It’s the engaging partner activities and a bunch of things that make her class more interactive.” 

Curriculum Associate for English Language Arts Dr. Salzman appreciates Ms. Muscarella’s caring approaches with her students. He said, “She looks at every student as an individual.”