BRENDAN C. A. MENG
Welcome To My Teaching Portfolio
My Introduction To A Career In Education
From an early age I have always had a love for knowledge and education. I grew up in the rural county of Goochland, Virginia where I spent most of my childhood playing in the woods with my older brother building forts and investigating all the flora and fauna that lived around our wooded home. My parents did their best to provide me with a solid educational foundation and enrolled me in a private preschool at the age of three. Goochland County Public Schools were ranked among the top public school systems in the state throughout my elementary to high school years. During my sixth grade year, my father was elected to the Goochland County School Board which he served on until I graduated high school. Following my high school graduation, I was accepted into Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Life Sciences where I received my Bachelor of Science degree in environmental studies and biology. Upon graduating from VCU, I held various professional occupations in the fields of public health and safety, environmental restoration, and ecological monitoring and assessment, from which I gained over a decade-worth of applicable, real-world knowledge and skills. Coupled with the knowledge gained through my undergraduate education, I am able to provide my students with a wealth of real-world experience, knowledge, and skills daily.
I began my career as a professional educator serving as a one-on-one single student mentor to a first grader at Kegotank Elementary School in Accomack County on Virginia's Eastern Shore. The connections I made and the feeling of purpose I discovered during this experience solidified my interest in pursuing a career as a life-long educator and learner. During this time I was introduced and applied to Teach For America which would serve as the pathway to becoming a fully certified and highly qualified secondary science teacher.
To the left, I am pictured here with the first-grade class of the student who I was a one-on-one mentor for. This experience gave me my first insights into how life changing becoming an educator could be for me and the students.
Throughout the two years which followed I gained unparalleled experience in providing educational equity through teaching the subjects of life science, physical science, and health to at-risk students from low-income families at an all-boys inner-city public charter school in Baltimore, Maryland. This group of about sixty students, whom I had the privilege to roll-up grades with and teach for two consecutive years, allowed me into their community, shared their culture, their lives, struggles, losses, successes, and triumphs with me. Together fighting against a school that was failing them as young scholars and a society that was failing them as young black men, we persevered and ignored statistics as heads held high on graduation day. Without contest, this group of young men changed my life, my perspective, and my investment in the fight for educational equity more than I could have ever imagined possible. They will forever hold a place in my heart and when I think of them, their memories will always remind me of what it is I am fighting for and why I step into my classroom each and every day.
Pictured above are scholars of the first graduating class of Banneker-Blake Academy for the Arts & Sciences who I had the pleasure of teaching for two consecutive years.
Pictured above are some of my first students from the school where I taught in Baltimore performing an investigative water-properties experiment (bottom right), completing a team-building activity (left), and presenting a scientific research project (top right).
Now, in my 4th year as an educator, I have come to believe that teaching is my calling. My experience as an educator spans elementary, middle, and high school classrooms at three different school sites across Maryland and Virginia. I have taught the subjects of health, life science, physical science, and oceanography. Currently, I teach several courses including earth science and biology at a public high school just outside of the city in Hanover County, Virginia.