Great classrooms are based on strong relationships between students and teachers; students won’t take risks or ownership of their learning unless they feel supported. Country Day teachers are not only experts in their fields, they care about our students as people first. By discovering the talents of each child, our teachers create an environment where students discover their own passions.

Our full Faculty and Staff Directory is available here.

Meet Jason Hinojosa

Jason Hinojosa teaches High School English and is English Department Chair. Jason earned his BA from the Great Books program at St. John’s College and his MFA from the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop.

Jason previously taught English at the Brentwood School in Los Angeles, St. Stephen’s in FL, and the Hong Kong International School. A global citizen, he spent his childhood in Latin America and has lived in Rwanda and India, among other places.

Meet Aleitha Burns

Middle School science teacher Aleitha Burns was born and raised in Houston, Texas, and moved east for college at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, NY, where she received her bachelor’s degree in environmental and forest biology, with a specialization in wildlife.

Aleitha says, “My freshman year in college, my ecology professor suggested a job working as an environmental educator in a summer camp in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate NY. This was my first job as an educator and I fell in love with working with middle schoolers.”

The middle school outdoor adventure to Redwood Glen in the Santa Cruz Mountains is a favorite for Aleitha, where students may be shivering one moment and eagerly discovering the outside world in the next moment.

A recent highpoint in Aleitha’s life: for a portion of her honeymoon, she and her new husband hiked the full John Muir trail and then kept walking – 230 miles through the high Sierra mountains ending on top of the highest peak in California – Mount Whitney!