Donna Powell-Murphy

Baltimore County, Maryland

Donna Powell-Murphy’s journey in education started in Jamaica teaching at an all -boys high school as a young teacher’s college graduate. Her love for education continued when she migrated to the US soon after and went on to complete her bachelor’s degree in English at Morgan State University and her master’s in teaching at Townson University in Maryland.

Her first teaching job in the US was at an urban elementary school in Baltimore City but soon went on to an urban middle school, where she taught for 5 years before moving to an urban/suburban high school, spending most of her teaching career there, a total of 17 years.

Donna is currently a staff development teacher at Southwest Academy, a middle school in Baltimore County, Maryland. She has 22 years of experience as an educator to include 11 years as an English Department chairperson at the high school level.

She is a mother of an adult college graduate daughter, an aunt of a nephew, a recent high school graduate headed for college and a stepmother to a middle school stepson getting ready for the 8th grade. She was born in Kingston, Jamaica but migrated to the US in 1993 with her mom and twin sister. She has been married to a business owner for 9 years, and when she is not spending time training and learning, she enjoys reading biographies and inspirational quotes, listening to a wide variety of music and motivational speeches, as well as hosting a radio segment on a local radio station. Her favorite quote is by Maya Angelou, “When you get, give; when you learn, teach.”

Donna is working on a long- term book project with her twin sister and daughter tracing their journey from Jamaica to the United States.