Justin Danzy never imagined that he would be teaching high school English. In college, he thought that he would pursue a career in the business world. Yet this year he joined the St. Louis U. High English Department to teach three sections of freshman English and the Shakespeare senior elective course.

Danzy grew up in Southeast Michigan and attended college for undergraduate studies in Kalamazoo, Mich. where he played Division Three football as a starting quarterback and started working towards a major in business. 

“I took a business class, and I thought ‘this sucks.’ It was just really boring to me,” said Danzy. “It was hard for me to try to force myself to do something that I am not passionate about.” 

During his college English classes, Danzy fell in love with reading different literature and the thinking that an English class requires one to do.

“English literature classes are great because it exposes you to the thoughts of people across the generations and millennia and it allows you to see the connectedness of the human experience,” said Danzy. “It is cool to me that the questions that Shakespeare was asking at the beginning of the 17th century are the same questions that we're asking today.”

After finishing college, Danzy enrolled at Washington University, where he completed his Master’s in English and got his Masters in Fine Arts. While working on his MFA, Danzy wrote a multitude of long essays and poems which helped him develop a love for writing. 

Danzy hopes to use this love for writing both in and outside the classroom. He hopes to help with Sisyphus, SLUH’s literary magazine. 

“I would like to start a club where we do creative writing or something that's outside of school,” said Danzy. “We would dive into creative writing deeper and in a more informal way than we would be able to in a class.” 

Danzy is already making changes in the classroom format, diverging from a typical lecture-style class to a more discussion-based class. Daily writing prompts are another activity that Danzy is incorporating into his freshman classes, hoping to inspire within his students a love for writing. 

 “Even those little things can kind of help relax the room a little bit and make having a discussion of the text easier,” said Danzy. “I'm really big on empowering the kids to lead discussions of text.”

In addition to teaching, Danzy has also been coaching SLUH’s football quarterbacks. 

“We do a lot of individual periods with the quarterbacks during practice,” said Danzy. “I have them and we go through our drills, but we also talk a lot because so much of the quarterback position is about the mental work.”

“Coach Danzy has been very helpful to me,” said varsity starting quarterback Luke Johnston. “He definitely knows what he is talking about, he is very relatable and I feel like he is always somebody I can turn to when I have questions about being a quarterback.” 

Coaching football allowed Danzy to solidify himself as a part of SLUH before students even entered his classroom. This allowed him to build relationships with students and feel more comfortable within the SLUH atmosphere. 

“Having the opportunity to coach is great because it has made the transition (to SLUH) a lot easier and kind of gave me that foundation to start off the year on the right foot,” said Danzy. 

Danzy hopes to teach his students to read through different lenses and looks forward to incorporating his own life experiences into his daily lessons.

“I hope that I can bring a different perspective, that my background and experiences will be an asset to SLUH and the students I work with,” said Danzy. “So far it has been a lot of fun.”