Experienced history teacher joins school’s new staff

New history teacher Faith Stackhouse Daly is a key addition to the school’s faculty for the 2014-15 school year and comes with a wealth of experience: She has been the Santa Clara County coordinator and a member of the state board for History Day for the past few years, a lead trainer for social studies teachers in Santa Clara County on the implementation of Common Core and a National Board Certified Teacher in the Social Sciences.

Daly came to SHS after 10 years of teaching at Gunn High School in Palo Alto, where she had experience teaching World History, U.S. History, AP U.S. History, Contemporary World History, U.S. Government, Psychology, Economics and Living Skills. She is teaching two sections of ninth-grade World Geography and three sections of 10th-grade World History.

She said she applied for the teaching position at here because she had grown tired of the commute from her home in Los Gatos to Palo Alto and also because she had previous connections with members of the Saratoga Social Studies department through History Day.

Daly earned two Bachelor of Arts from UC Davis in Political Science and History, and a Master of Arts from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in International Policy Studies, where she focused on development and nonproliferation. While there, she worked on research regarding the use of chemical and biological weapons in terrorist attacks and was hired as a Treaty Analyst for the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) on a contract with the U.S. Army verifying chemical weapons destruction.

In fact, Daly was selected to represent the U.S. Army in presentations on the status of disarmament at The Hague in the Netherlands while she was working at SAIC.

“It was pretty amazing to be representing our government at the age of 24,” Daly said.

Daly said her decision to leave government work and enter teaching was largely inspired by the inequalities in education privilege she saw in the world around her.

“I believe that service to our youth is more valuable than any personal accolades I could have received by staying in government work,” Daly said. “Despite the lack of public applause, public service roles are among the most important career choices one can make.”

Daly first taught English as well as some First Grade and International Baccalaureate (IB) Chemistry for a year and a half in Rabat, Morocco, then eventually moved to teaching at Gunn and now Saratoga.

Daly said that the biggest difference between the two schools is the size of the student body; Gunn had between 1,800 and 2,100 students over the ten years that she taught there, which is considerably larger than the population at Saratoga.

“As one of the top performing schools in the country, the students [at Gunn] are quite comparable to those at Saratoga,” Daly said.

So far, Daly said her experience in her classes at the school has been enjoyable.

“I love Saratoga and am happy to be a Falcon,” Daly said. “The staff and students have been warm and welcoming.  Right now, there is nowhere else I’d rather be.”