Maura McKenna

Board Secretary

Maura McKenna was raised in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania by her hard-working and loving parents who prioritized the education of her and her two older brothers from an early age. Maura had the privilege to attend a small, Catholic school in her community for her elementary education and later attended Gwynedd Mercy Academy High School, a college-preparatory school for girls.   

Maura moved to Philadelphia to attend La Salle University in the fall of 2012. It was here where she began to dive into conversations on race, privilege, and economic disparities within the city of Philadelphia. She also spent a great deal of time in public and charter school classrooms across the city as a part of her teacher training. It was in these classrooms where she began to see the disparity between her own suburban education and the education of children living within the city’s borders. The budget shortfalls, the bureaucracy, the disciplinary differences, and the glaring division between race and class lines became obvious. After seeing these disparities, Maura knew she wanted her future career as a teacher to be within these under-resourced schools.

At the same time, Maura was an active member of La Salle’s Immersion and Volunteer Experience program where she led a service and immersion experience to Dekalb County, Georgia to partner with the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity there. She was also a La Salle Ambassador, a member of the National Association of Collegiate Scholars, and a four-year varsity athlete on the Women’s Rowing Team. She graduated in 2016 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Early Elementary and Special Education and a minor in American Studies.

After graduating from La Salle, Maura moved a few miles from North Philadelphia to West Philadelphia. There she became a member of the 6th Cohort with the Alliance for Catholic Education program at St. Joseph’s University (ACESJU). As a fellow with ACESJU, Maura and her cohort committed to pillars of simple living, education, social justice, and spirituality. While working towards her Masters in Education, Maura worked as a full-time middle school English teacher at St. Frances Cabrini, an Independence Mission School in the Overbrook section of West Philadelphia. Maura saw value in becoming a member of the community and living in solidarity with her students. Living just next door to the school, she took on the role of becoming the girl’s basketball coach and loved organizing the “Summer Literacy Night,” an educational program for parents where they received early access to free summer reading books and learned ways to curb academic regression over the summer.    

Maura is now starting her second year with the School District of Philadelphia as a 6th-grade teacher at Olney Elementary. While her own upbringing in a white middle-class community stands in contrast with the spaces she now occupies as a teacher, Maura recognizes the importance of continued anti-racist teacher training and a commitment to confronting and dismantling her own preconceptions, ideologies, and biases. As a White teacher of Black and Brown students, Maura seeks to create safe physical and emotional spaces in her classroom by affirming students’ identities through culturally relevant pedagogy and decreasing the distance between their own cultures and communities and their school experiences. Maura is excited to bring her passion and energy for racial justice, especially in the realm of education, to CommonBondz.