Teacher Is Excited for New Role at School

Leah Moran is the Dean of Students at Arrowhead Elementary. Last year she worked as the gifted specialist. Moran says she is very excited about her new role. It will keep her “still very much in the classroom” and she looks forward to being “an instructional leader on campus,” she explains. 

Moran is starting her 10th year as an educator. She began her career as a middle school science teacher in Cave Creek before transitioning to gifted education. She began teaching in Deer Valley in 2020.

“I feel like my whole life I wanted to be a teacher,” says Moran, who recalls playing school with her stuffed animals in growing up in Cleveland, Ohio. 

“I would teach them whatever I learned in school that day.” Her family moved to Arizona when Moran was in middle school.

 As a student, science was Moran’s favorite subject. “I loved doing all the science experiments,” she recalls. Since pivoting to gifted education, she has developed a love of math. 

“Now math is my favorite thing to teach. We play games after each unit…have little prizes and do little things to make it fun,” Moran says.

Student Maddie writes, “Mrs.Moran always gives us time to improve in her class. She gives us projects to help unlock our creativity while learning math.”

Moran says that she is extroverted at school, so people might be surprised to learn that she is much quieter away from school. One of her favorite solitary activities is baking. She even has her own bakery that she runs out of her house. Moran also enjoys reading and spending time with her family, including her 3-month-old son and two little dogs. “That takes a lot of my time,” she notes.

Moran says she likes to talk to students about how to stay resilient. She would sometimes give her gifted students high school math problems to work on as an exercise in resiliency.

Even for very bright students, “at some point (they) will come across an academic challenge,” says Moran. Tackling “a challenge that’s not going to be solved right away” was a good lesson in not giving up, she says.