Danielle Barnes is a teacher here at Mill Creek who focuses on teaching World History, Ethnic Studies and Law. She has been working with Mill Creek for over 15 years.

Before working at Mill Creek, she worked at a daycare and Toys “R” Us customer service during her high school and college years. She’s currently learning Spanish since she didn’t learn it in school. She then started her career as a teacher, explaining, “I’ve always known that I wanted to work with kids in some capacity. Like I actually love kids. I’ve always loved kids, and I’ve always wanted to help them.”

Barnes describes her methods of teaching as, “a little weird or eccentric”. She makes an effort to keep kids on task and engaged through games and make the experience overall enjoyable for all her students. In late January of 2020, the coronavirus outbreak made its declaration worldwide which ultimately started the coronavirus pandemic. Schools were quickly transitioned from in person learning to digital, this sudden change leaving a big impact on students and teachers. Barnes, along with other teachers, attempted to work with what they had to help maintain a learning environment for students without face to face interactions. She explains how she would try to make the experience fun for students while also understanding it was a lot for everybody, “I would call out kids on their cameras and try to be quirky about it like ‘Oh man, that’s a really nice forehead ‘ if they’re not showing their face or like ‘Oh. those curtains are amazing. Where did you get them?’ but all in all they were good kids.”

Teachers at Mill Creek put in the work and effort for students to learn and grow all throughout their years of high school. Barnes being no different as she stated, “I want them to enjoy their experience here at school, their high school years, and I want to play a role in that as far as helping them out. What I want from them is to put forth their best effort and to value what we as teachers give them.”