“There's no predictability about the day,” she explained. “You can schedule your calendar for meetings, school visits, and other activities, but the truth is, day to day, it's very different. And that's one of the things I really like about the job.”
Dr. Yannacone began her career as a teacher in 1990, first at Penncrest High School, and then at Marple Newtown High School in Delaware County. She later moved to Strath Haven High School in 2003, taking on the role of Assistant Principal before then serving as Principal from 2005 to 2018. In the same year, she began her new position as Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction, finally assuming the role of Superintendent in 2020.
While a career in administration was not one Dr. Yannacone expected for herself, attending Villanova as an undergraduate and a graduate student seemed fated. Growing up in the area, she was strongly encouraged by her father, a fervent Wildcat who graduated in 1958, to consider the university. “From the time I was a little kid,” Dr. Yannacone said, “we were on Villanova's campus for alumni events, for football games, for basketball games. My father had season tickets to Villanova men's basketball from when I was a little girl, so I grew up on the campus.” Initially, that familiarity worked against Dr. Yannacone’s interest in the university. “My father was so pro-Villanova that I wanted to go really anywhere else, so when I was applying, I actually looked at every other school in the region. I looked at St. Joe's, which was blasphemy at the time to my father. I went up to Boston College. My parents let me apply to the University of Pennsylvania. But in the end, Villanova had the program that I wanted. It had a great reputation, I loved the campus, and so it was a perfect fit for me.”
After completing her Bachelor’s in Education, Dr. Yannacone decided to pursue a Master’s degree in English at Villanova. She told me how she “had a great experience in the undergraduate English department” thanks to “some outstanding teachers,” including the department’s own Dr. Evan Radcliffe and Dr. Crystal Lucky. “I just felt at home there. I felt very comfortable at the university.”
One key focus of Dr. Yannacone’s earlier work in her Master’s program was a canon-expanding exploration of Central and South American women’s literature. “I really wanted to push the boundaries of what the canon presumed was what we should be reading,” she explained, “because even though I love the classics and I enjoyed all of my studies, I really wanted broader exposure to underrepresented voices. I found myself sort of trying to squeak out those margins of what we consider the canon quite a bit in my courses.”
Her focus on uplifting marginalized voices would become a core tenet of her work, not just as an academic but also as an educator and administrator. Dr. Yannacone credits her time at Villanova with introducing her to a level of diversity she had not experienced before. “I spent all of my early years in Catholic school. And at the time, diversity in my Catholic school was, ‘Are you Italian or Irish?’ So I had very little exposure as a younger child to, first of all, poverty. I grew up in Rosetree Media, and I was very privileged as a child financially. I also grew up in a racially homogenous community, and so when I got to Villanova, it was the first time that I had exposure to a more diverse population.”
Challenging the sociopolitical barriers that create these material inequities became a guiding mission for Dr. Yannacone. She told me how many of her friends expected to work at Cardinal O’Hara—her alma mater and a private high school—as she began her teaching career, but she chose a different path. “I really do believe in public education and wanted to see what I could do in making a commitment to it, exposing myself to a broader group of students and community members. That's where I really learned a lot about the resource imbalances in public schools compared to parochial schools, and in urban schools compared to suburban and rural schools.”
“There's an old saying,” Dr. Yannacone continued, “that education is the great equalizer. Public education is the great equalizer. It's why in this country we have public education, the idea that we wanted an informed citizenry. And so I bought into that wholly and just thought about what I can do as an educator and eventually as an educational leader to make that more of a reality than it is.” Dr. Yannacone’s career as an educator always involved her contributing as much as possible to her students, though not always in the ways she expected. Early in her tenure at Marple Newtown High School, she began coaching several extracurricular sports teams, including track and field, tennis, and basketball. “It was busy, but I loved it. I loved working with students. I loved the balance of seeing students in the classroom and then seeing them out on the track [or on the field].” With some nudging from a close colleague, Dr. Yannacone doubled down further on her various leadership roles, becoming a grad-level chair, a position she held for twelve years until she left Marple Newtown to move into administration.
Becoming an assistant principal was not a move Dr. Yannacone foresaw for herself when envisioning her career as a teacher back at Villanova, nor was it an opportunity she saw coming when she was offered the job. “The assistant principal at the time said to me, ‘MaryJo, I’m leaving at the end of the month, and they’re going to make you assistant principal,’ and I said, ‘I’m not even certified!’” She then went into the principal’s office, stunned by their offer and wondering why she had been considered for the position in the first place. “He said, ‘You have natural leadership qualities. We know you don’t have the degree yet, but we’re going to get you emergency certified.’ I had just written a course, Women’s Literature of the Americas, for the spring, and I was coaching track. So I said, ‘Look, I’ll do it if I can still teach that hour of the day and I can still coach. I’ll stay late to get my paperwork done, but I’ll try it.’”
Dr. Yannacone did more than just try; she thrived, so much so that she was invited to return as assistant principal the following school year. However, wanting to keep learning about teaching, she said no. “I went back into the classroom, and I’m so glad I did, because in the years between that one semester of emergency certification and becoming an assistant principal in a neighboring district, I was the union president for two years. I talked to elementary, middle, and high school teachers, and I really got to understand the ins and outs of the challenges for different people. It made me a better school leader.”
While Dr. Yannacone makes it look easy, handling such a wide range of responsibilities daily and managing such a diverse collective of professionals is no small feat. When asked how she manages to seemingly flow from role to role at the drop of a hat and hold space for such a wide variety of concerns all at once, she explained that it all comes down to being a skilled listener. “All of these different perspectives play into the health of a school community…It’s not just teachers; it’s school psychologists, food service workers, custodial services, bus drivers, administrators. There are so many departments with varying viewpoints about what’s a priority, where we should be putting our energies, our finances…I feel like the top use of my time is spending time with people, hearing about their experiences, and learning their perspectives.”
Dr. Yannacone also shared some advice for graduate students considering pursuing a career in education. First and foremost, she emphasized the importance of starting as soon as you can, even arguing that teaching while still pursuing a graduate degree should be considered an advantage. “I’m glad that I was working and studying concurrently, because it allowed me to immediately put into practice what I was studying…It’s not to say it wasn’t difficult. It was. But it doesn’t get less challenging when you have a family, are raising children, or are cultivating a marriage. I think the best thing you can do is get out there and live life, and part of that is getting to work and bringing what you’re living into your perspective on what you’re studying.”
Finally, as our conversation wound down, I asked Dr. Yannacone what advice she would’ve given to her younger self, just starting in education. After a brief pause, she began. “There’s a mindset I encountered when I was young that, if you’re really bright, you should go into medicine, law, finance, all these other fields, because you’re not going to make any money as a teacher, but I have never felt, through my entire educational career, that I lacked for anything. What I still hear today is that the reason why we have a teaching shortage is that we don’t make teaching attractive from a financial standpoint, but in every other way, it’s enough.”
“The most important thing about my entire career is that it’s had meaning…I say every year at our convocation to the 500 people who work in my district, ‘Your jobs are the most important jobs on the planet. There's nothing that's more important. It's feeding children. It's busing children. It's educating children. It's providing counseling support for children. It's leading children. We're doing the most important work.’ And so I don’t know of any other profession that has more meaning. I don’t know why you’d do anything else.”
—Aria Gray
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