Margaret Gaffney teaches Language and Literature, English A at UWC-USA enjoying this role since fall of 2024. She has worked in US schools since 1996, initially serving as an Americorps member. As Teach For America corps member and alumna (1997 corps), she’s been a teacher, master teacher, assistant principal and principal at middle and high schools in New Orleans, Louisiana and taught in the greater Santa Fe, New Mexico area. Margaret specialized in urban education, school improvement and turnaround, and instruction in English, and Special Education for the Academically Gifted before discovering the IB. She was the first high school principal of Morris Jeff Community School, an IB World School located in New Orleans, and launched the inaugural Diploma Programme graduating class there (2021). She is parent of a UWC-USA alum.

Margaret is certified in New Mexico and Louisiana as a teacher of English, special education and as a high school administrator/Principal, and holds a bachelor’s degree from St. John’s College, Santa Fe (1995) a masters degree in Educational Leadership from The University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg (2000), and has completed non-degree graduate studies at Xavier University of New Orleans, The University of New Orleans, and The Relay School of Educational Leadership where she was a Principal Fellow (2018). Margaret has traveled to all continents except Antarctica, and loves teaching International Students at UWC how to interpret language and complex texts, and to become better writers.