We are so lucky to have incredible new staff members here at St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes. Throughout the first few weeks of school, we interviewed all of the new faculty members and learned about their stories and why they chose to be a part of our community at SSSAS. Below we have some fun and interesting facts to help you get to know your new teachers.. Meet the new faculty and staff: Ms. Ziegler (technical theatre director), Ms. Pinkley (director of upper school admission), Mr. Bryan (history teacher), Mr. Cebrzynski (academic support specialist), Ms. Dennison (health and human sexuality), Mr. Bennett (history teacher), Ms. Ottoway (computer science, and robotics coach) and Mr. Siddeeq (academic center and spanish teacher).
Mr. Bryan
Mr. Bryan works every other day here at SSSAS, teaching AP government. Mr. Bryan grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, attending a public school there as a kid. He went to the Air Force Academy for undergrad leading him to become a pilot in the Air Force for 10 years! Mr. Bryan is retired from the Air Force. For graduate school Mr. Bryan went to law school at the University of Virginia, getting his degrees there in law and history. Once finishing school Mr. Bryan moved to Tennessee to become a lawyer. Fun fact: he missed the Air Force so much he was a lawyer 4 days a week and flew with the national guard 1 day a week!! He taught at an Air Force Strategy school for 5 years, then moved to D.C working with Congress at the Pentagon. He retired from the military in 2019. Mr. Bryan worked for the Senator of California: Dianne Feinstein. She passed away so for some time he worked for her senator. After some time there he decided to take some time off. Mr. Bryan ran into Mr. Mallet one day and asked if St. Stephen’s needed any help and we did! Mr. Bryan has worked in such incredible job spaces! We are thrilled to have Mr. Bryan as a new addition to our community.
Ms. Dennison
Ms. Dennison was raised in Harford County, Maryland, a little up north of Baltimore and attended John Carroll High School. She then went to Westchester in Pennsylvania for college and then went back to Maryland to complete her master’s degree at McDaniel College. Her first job was not teaching Health and Human Sexuality, but it was teaching college lacrosse for four years at McDaniels. She then picked up a teaching job there as an athletic director and health teacher. Following her career at McDaniel’s, she then taught at a middle school for five years as a health teacher and athletic director. She had heard of the lacrosse program here at St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes was interested in joining along with our health and human sexuality program, but currently she is coaching JV field hockey.
“At some point, I’d like to be a part of the lacrosse program.” She told The Voice. She is really excited about teaching at SSSAS, and has “always loved teaching this stuff, especially to high school students.” She loves learning and teaching about mental health as well.
In her free time, Ms. Dennison loves playing pickleball, riding bikes on the weekends, and spending time with her pet dog named Honey.
Mr. Cebrzynski
Mr. Cebrzynski was born in Chicago but grew up in places around the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. He attended Virginia Tech, majoring in Animal science. After college, he was unsure of what he wanted to do; both of his parents were teachers, so he was a bit reluctant to follow in their footsteps because he wanted to do something different. However, he tried out teaching anyway, and in the first 2 weeks, he fell in love with it!
He started off teaching at a high school in D.C. for 2 years and also at a middle school in D.C., where he taught for 4 years. Mr. Cebrzynski then decided he wanted a change, saying, “I kind of just wanted to shift to something different. I saw that this job opened up, and going from public to private felt like a good move.” He discovered St. Stephen’s because his girlfriend is an alumni who graduated from SSSAS in 2016. His girlfriend was the one who told him to go for it because she had an incredible experience here when she attended SSSAS. Mr. Cebrzynski has taught English, math, reading, and science. He has taught all types of sciences, his favorite being biology. Mr. Cebrzynski felt that going into the academic center to help students with academic challenges would be the next step into his career.
These past 2 weeks of being in school he says: “I think the community is really great…I feel like everyone’s really respectful which is new for me… I really like the environment.” Which is awesome to hear. Some fun facts about him is he loves to cook and actually won his family cooking contest winning both a trophy and bragging rights for a year. He played football for 4 years in high school, also coaching it for one season, threw the discus in track and coached track for 4 years as well. We are so excited to have Mr. Cebrzynski as a part of our community.
Mr. Bennett
Mr. Bennett was born in Washington, D.C. and was raised in Centreville, Virginia. He attended Gonzaga High School in Washington, D.C., and attended college at University of Delaware, where he got his Bachelor of Arts and majored in Sociology. He then went to graduate school at Catholic University, where he got his Master of Arts and majored in Secondary Education. Not only did he go to grad school once, but twice! Mr. Bennett went to graduate school again at the University of Virginia, where he got his Master’s in Education and majored in Administration and Supervision. He and his wife made the decision around 5 years ago to move from DC to Alexandria, VA. Some fun facts about Mr. Bennett are: he played club lacrosse at the University of Delaware, and when he graduated from college, he began to coach lacrosse. He has been coaching for 16 years and will be helping to coach the boys’ varsity lacrosse team this upcoming spring! Another one is that his first ever job was working on a golf course in the summer.
Ms. Pinkney
We are thrilled to have Ms. Pinkney as a new addition to SSSAS. Ms. Pinkney was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, and attended Union College in New York, where she also swam at the Division III level. Before working at SSSAS, she worked in the admissions department at 4 different boarding schools, including Episcopal.
While she loved working at boarding school, she “wanted a little bit more of a balance” between work and outside of work.
At home, Ms. Pinkney has a husband, a 15-month-old daughter, and a 7-year-old French Bulldog named Pepper. Outside of working here at SSSAS, she works at Barre3, a fitness studio in Old Town, Alexandria.
Ms. Pinky loves to travel and has been all over the world. She studied abroad in Brazil during college. She loved travelling to Japan, Switzerland, and Alaska. She loves to bake, and her favorite things to bake are cupcakes and pies. She enjoys teaching swimming lessons to all ages, from toddlers to adults. We are so excited to have Ms. Pinkney at SSSAS this year!
Ms. Ziegler
Ms. Ziegler was born and raised in Columbus, a small town in Indiana, and attended Denison University in Ohio. After college, she moved all over the world. Her most memorable experiences have been her time living in Virginia and Madrid.
“I really like to make wherever I live home,” she told us during an interview. “Find the good things about it.”
Her first teaching job was at Druid Hills High School, a DeKalb Country school in Atlanta, Georgia; “I taught Spanish during the day and ran a theater bar after school.” She taught all levels of Spanish up to AP and IB, then ran the theater department in the afternoons. When asked if she’d want to teach Spanish here at St. Stephen’s & St. Agnes, she said she’d love to teach any student who has any questions about the language.
When it came to finding a job in the DMV, Ms. Zeigler found SSSAS interesting, saying it “sounded like the kind of school I’d like working at.” She likes our school’s mission statement and found it to be the school that best fits her interests. She’s always had an interest in theater, so it was no brainer that she applied and got the job as our first technical theatre director; “I started making theater at a very young age, and have always loved it,” she explained. “I did some performing, dancing, those kinds of things growing up, but I’ve always loved the aspect of producing the theater’s stage management, set design, props, publicity, posters, just organizing the whole thing.”
A special talent Ms. Zeigler has is knitting. She’s made projects inspired by movies, and it’s a hobby of hers that she enjoys. We are so excited to welcome Ms. Zeigler into our theater crew.
Ms. Ottoway
Ms. Ottoway grew up in the Pacific Northwest and went to college at Western University. She moved to Denver in 2020 and her first teaching job was at a school in the area as well. She taught computer science to middle schoolers as she herself enjoys computer science.
“I did robotics in high school back in the Pacific Northwest,” she told The Voice. “There I did some build, documentation, and outreach on robotics.”
She moved to the DMV area for family reasons and was looking for a school with a strong existing computer science program to be a part of. She will also be coaching St. Stephen’s & St. Agnes’ robotics team. Although she has run robotics clubs at schools, this will be her first time teaching a robotics class. A special interest of Ms. Ottoway is competitive sailing. She’d also consider that to be her hidden talent.
Mr. Siddeeq
We are so excited to welcome Mr. Siddeeq as a learning specialist and Spanish teacher! Mr. Siddeeq was born in the Bronx but grew up in upstate New York. Mr. Siddeeq grew up with an older sister and brother, and when he was five, he would help his sister deliver newspapers. He attended Robert Morris University but then transferred to the State University of New York at Albany. He switched his major from communications to Spanish because he always loved Spanish classes, and he felt he could use it in the real world. He studied abroad in Chile for six weeks, lived in Puerto Rico for five months, and lived in Cuba for ten days. Mr. Siddeeq actually taught here eight years ago during a tenure here at the school. He decided to come back because after he left, he got a sense of what a special community SSSAS is. Mr. Siddeeq’s hidden talent is that he can snap his fingers very loudly. Outside of teaching, he really enjoys reading about metaphysics. He wants to say, “It’s a great day to be a Saint!”
