Dr. Cicely Woodard is an experienced teacher leader who has taught secondary mathematics since 2003. She has spent most of her career teaching in middle schools in Tennessee. Currently, her passion for students learning math content through relevant, real-world contexts is evident in her classroom in Springfield, Missouri, where she teaches high school mathematics. Students in her math classes develop critical thinking skills while engaging in challenging math tasks that require them to justify their thinking and critique the reasoning of others through small group work and writing about math. Cicely believes that learning math can help her students face life’s challenges with confidence.
Her teacher leadership work involves speaking at the local, state, and national levels, developing district-wide scope and sequence documents, reviewing state-wide assessments, mentoring student teachers, and facilitating mathematics education professional learning opportunities. She has served as an adjunct instructor at Vanderbilt University and Lipscomb University. She has had opportunities to inform education policy at the state level as a member of the Tennessee Teacher Advisory Council, Tennessee Assessment Taskforce, and the State Collaborative on Reforming Education Steering Committee. In 2014, she served as the coordinator of the Tennessee Educator Fellowship with the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, where teachers learned about education policy and advocated for their students. She has also served on the advisory council of Teachers1on1, an online platform dedicated to helping students succeed by providing virtual learning led by qualified teachers and she has served as the chair of the NEA Foundation Advisory Board. Currently, she serves as a professor of math reasoning and the math faculty lead at Reach University.
Cicely is a 2017 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching Recipient, a 2018 Greater Nashville Alliance of Black School Educators Award Winner, the 2018 Tennessee Teacher of the Year, a 2019 Horace Mann for Teaching Excellence Award Winner, the 2019 NEA Member Benefits Award for Teaching Excellence Winner, and a 2022 NEA Foundation Global Learning Fellow. She is currently serving a fellowship year with the National Curriculum Catalyst Fellowship, sponsored by The National Network of State Teachers of the Year and the Collaborative for Student Success.
Cicely earned a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from the University of Memphis, a Master of Education in Secondary Education from Vanderbilt University, and a Doctor of Education in Leading Organizations and Strategic Change from Lipscomb University. Cicely and her husband, Ron, are raising two sons, Jonathan and Joseph.
