As an alumni and IB Psychology teacher, Mr. Doug Grove has seen little change in his experiences with his students over his 25 years of teaching. Mr. Grove attended the school as a student and is now the varsity baseball coach. “I’ve always liked the history of Washington-Lee. Going around Virginia, you realize you’ll almost always run into a Washington-Lee guy,” Mr. Grove said. “You know some of the names associated with this high school over the years and the history of Arlington and Virginia that’s the one really neat thing.”

He has many fond memories of helping his students during his time here as a teacher. “I’ve been doing this for 28 years so there’s a lot of moments,” Mr. Grove said. “Just the daily interaction with the students is cool. You know what’s fun about teaching is there’s never been even a single class period that’s the same as another. It’s not like you’re sitting in an office or in a cubical you’re actually interacting with kids.”

As the psychology teacher, Mr. Grove has the opportunity to explore how people, including his students, brains’ work. He wants to create a nurturing and healthy environment for his students. He also has high expectations for his students as they learn about very intricate matters of the brain. “I want them to be able to say that they can do this,” Mr. Grove said. “If they have a problem they can get through this so in a word that’s called resilience. It’s the same thing that happens in sports too. You may not always be able to do your best but the next day you can come again and do better than the day before, so a stumble isn’t permanent you just work through it. A lot of people come into this class with no background at all, but just stick with it.”

Mr. Grove is happy to have seen some change in the school since he started teaching here in 1989. “I think the biggest thing that has changed was in mid 90’s when we started to implicate the IB program,” Mr. Grove said. “I think that lifted everything. The academics were always good, but they’ve really improved in my opinion. And I think that you don’t have to be an IB student to realize that. It’s made every other class a little bit better.”