Emily Hunter, principal of Arlington Elementary School in Baltimore, says she was raised "all over the place." Born in Virginia, she lived in Ohio, North Carolina and Maryland and always expected to move on, much as many military kids do. However, her situation was different. Her father, Richard Hunter, was a superintendent of schools.
Dr. Hunter was a great influence on Emily, but she also rebelled against him. In other words, the educator's life was out of the question. The same was true of her sister and four brothers.
"I wanted to get away from all that," she says. "I floundered around."
While at Morgan State University, a historically black college, she investigated becoming a pediatrician but learned it wasn't for her. Next, she investigated becoming a lawyer and specializing in child welfare. Then, suddenly, apropos of nothing except a love of math, she decided to become an accountant.
One day, while walking across the Morgan State campus, Patricia Welsh, the education dean, who knew her father, stopped her in her tracks and said, "You have to switch to education."
Emily balked, but not long later, she switched to education, won a full scholarship and graduated with honors in elementary education.
"I was more mature and I went with it," she says.
Immediately after graduating, she became a second-grade teacher at Bentalou Elementary in Baltimore in 1998. She was only 20, but a teacher had quit and the principal, Mary Ann Winterling, "was amazing."
"The kids were swinging on the doors, climbing the walls, and I loved it," she says, and she followed them to third grade: "I liked the building and the relationship with the children and their families. I liked seeing them become better people."
At a summer workshop, she learned about the Edison Schools. She was asked to become a literacy lead for Edison and she did. She stayed with Edison for eight years and enjoyed it, although there was no union to protect them and "we worked our tails off."
In 2008, she became part of "Success for All." She traveled widely, providing training for districts across the country and even in Guam, and went to particular school sites to focus on the implementation of math and reading programs.
