A True Leader: Denise Edwards Reflects on Career in Education as She Prepares to Launch Sojourner Truth School as Principal

Reporting for Multimedia Storytelling (SPRING 2020)

Denise Edwards, Founding Principal of Truth Montessori Schools

A small, but significant detail you’ll notice about Denise Edwards-- her t-shirt worn under a black leather jacket that reads “Don’t come for me.” Sojourner Truth. Small, as one might miss it amongst her all-black outfit, along with red cat-eye glasses frames and short magenta and cheetah print nails. Significant, because the originator of the quote is the namesake of the school she helped found-- Sojourner Truth Montessori Public Charter School.

Set to open in August 2020, “The Truth School” will be the first public Montessori charter school for middle and high school students throughout Washington, D.C. and will offer a student-centered learning style. Edwards will steer the ship as the school’s founding principal. 

Edwards brings over 15 years of education experience to D.C., although-- as she recounts-- being an educator wasn’t in her plan.

“Graduating [in] education wasn't even on the agenda,” she said. “I went to the University of Delaware. My degree is in entomology and applied ecology. I wanted to do wildlife conservation and population ecology.”

A series of professional development programs-- including study abroad programs in South Africa and Peru studying wildlife-- postured Edwards to do just that. She landed a job with the Department of Agriculture as an entomologist just before the September 11 attacks which left her entire department without a budget.

“The whole department was cut,” she remembered. “I was like, ‘Okay, well, I have to figure out something to do.’ I was coaching track and field at the time with [D.C. Redwings] and one of the parents had her own charter school and was looking to open up a second campus.”

Edwards’ dream, she said, was to coach track at the collegiate level. She thought taking the job would set her on the path to accomplishing that goal, not realizing the greater shift in her career trajectory. One person who noticed Edwards’ inclination towards teaching earlier on, however, was her mother Myrtle Brijbasi.

Herself a now-retired educator, Brijbasi said although her daughter loved the fieldwork, through “the collection of data and reporting it to the higher authorities and sharing her knowledge in that respect, she realized was actually teaching.”

This lead Edwards to become a founding teacher at Cesar Chavez Public Charter School. From that point, her mother says her career “skyrocketed.”

One thing that has always been true, is Edwards’ leadership capabilities. Throughout her childhood, her mother recalls her leadership qualities standing out from a young age. As the oldest of three children, “she showed a lot of independence rather early. When she started preschool, her teachers commented that she emerged as a leader among her peers.”

From left to right: Justin Lessek, Founding Executive Director of Truth Montessori School; Dr. Lisa Delpit, author of “Other People’s Children;” and Denise Edwards, Founding Principal of Truth Montessori School.

In adulthood, Edwards has demonstrated those same leadership skills: As she prepares to launch The Truth Montessori School, for which she came on full-time last August, she has worked to ensure that the success of the school is a community effort.

From attending Advisory Neighborhood Commission meetings, hosting open houses, putting on yoga and mindfulness events with families, Edwards stressed that students’ success-- above the success of the school-- will depend on those community partnerships.

“I want [students] to have these real-life experiences in the community. We want you to know that the community can come into the school and then students can go out and be a part of the community, whether they live there or not.”

Other community efforts, all with a social justice and racial equity lens, include a partnership with UDC that will allow Truth students to have access to their greenhouses to learn about farming and entrepreneurship. Her hope is to show that the predominantly black community the school serves can benefit from programs like this and that the Montessori style of learning itself, created by Dr. Maria Montessori in Rome over 100 years ago, should be an option for secondary education.

“This is like my life dream come true,” Edwards said. “Some days I'm like, 'What did I sign up for?' But at the end of the day, I know that this is what our kids in D.C. need, like they need an alternative experience, especially at the middle school level.”