This year, Mackenzie Pease (B.S.Ed. ’23, M.Ed. ’24), an alumna of the Mary Frances Early College of Education, began teaching sixth-grade social studies at Hightower Trail Middle School in Marietta, Georgia.
Although this is her first year teaching there, her introduction to the school came much earlier.
A Cobb County native, Pease attended middle school at Hightower Trail before returning as a teacher for the 2025-26 school year.
“It was a little weird in the beginning, coming back to the same school that I went to,” Pease said. “A few of my teachers are still here, so them seeing me in a coworker situation was definitely a little weird in the beginning, but it’s more comfortable now.”
Her connection to Hightower Trail runs even deeper—her mother, Amy, is the librarian at the school and is a fellow alumna of the College of Education, graduating with a degree in business education in 1996. Before that, Pease’s grandmother, Shari, taught at Hightower Trail when the school opened in 1993 until her retirement.
Now, Pease is the third generation in her family to work at the same school, and she teaches the same subject her grandmother taught.
History repeats itself
In school, Pease said that social studies classes were always her favorites and the ones that most interested her.
“Just the idea of history repeats itself, like you have to learn about it to prevent things from happening again in the future, it always just stuck with me,” Pease said. “Even the social studies classes that I didn’t necessarily do spectacularly in, I still enjoyed the content.”
Her grandmother’s passion for teaching social studies, coupled with her mother having attended UGA, also influenced her decision to study social studies education through the Double Dawgs program.
In college, Pease took classes taught by Rebecca Geller, an assistant professor in the College’s Department of Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies Education, for three consecutive years, and enjoyed the conversations held in those classes. She credits her time at UGA for preparing her to teach sixth grade, having taught a sixth-grade class as a student teacher, as well as preparing her to navigate difficult discussions about history topics with her students that can arise in social studies classrooms.
At Hightower Trail this year, Pease and her students have spent most of the semester discussing Europe between World War I and World War II and having conversations of their own in her classroom.
“I try to make it a space where you can ask a question that you have, as long as it’s respectful,” she said. “But asking those tough questions and having those tough conversations about things surrounding the Holocaust and those kinds of tragedies in World War II, it’s hard, but I felt like we had productive conversations about it.”
But beyond the social studies classroom setting, the concept of history repeating itself echoes in a different way: through the shared family connection to education.
“Having two teachers in my family, my whole childhood, definitely had an impact, and I come from a really long line of teachers as well,” Pease said. “I think, like extended family, there are 11 of us, so the teaching profession has always been in the family.”