Alicia McNeill
Physical Education Teacher
Alumni Profile: Why I Teach | Alicia McNeill
“I love kids, I love coaching, and I knew that teaching something I was passionate about was where I could totally thrive."
One of Physical Education Assistant Teacher Alicia McNeill's most fond memories of being a Lab student was on Robert Rauschenberg Day in the late 1990s the year Artist Chuck Close came. “We were playing Capture the Flag on the back hill where the playground is now. The theme song from “Mission Impossible” was blaring and we were running around tagging people and strategizing ways to seize the flag. Whenever I hear that song, it all comes back,” she says. “That memory is an example of how alive I felt at Lab. You never knew what was going to happen on any given day, but you knew it would be good. Anything was possible. I feel the same way now as a teacher — each day is a possibility to help our students connect the important lessons you can learn in sports to real life.”
McNeill came to Lab in 1996 when she was 10. She then went on to Trinity Washington University, earning a degree in Criminal Justice. At Trinity, she played soccer her freshman year until she tore her ACL. Two years later, she was recruited to play lacrosse, even though she had never before picked up a stick. She fell in love with the sport and played defense her junior and senior years.
Despite her love of sports, Ms. NcNeill made a few career detours before joining Lab. “I knew I always wanted to work with people, and I had a keen interest in law enforcement,” she says. For one year during college, she interned for the Montgomery County Police Department as a police apprentice, and after graduating, she served for four years as director of the Summer Program for the City of Hyattsville in Maryland.
In 2012, when she was deciding between two police jobs she’d been offered, she heard about the PE opening at Lab.“Saying yes to Lab was not a difficult decision,” says Ms. McNeill who jokes that it took her a while to be able to call her former teachers and coaches by their first names. “I love kids, I love coaching, and I knew that teaching something I was passionate about was where I could totally thrive."
