Growing up in Woburn, Mass., Emma Ciasullo ’26 loved to play “school,” pretending she was a teacher just like her mom, who taught fourth grade at her elementary school.
“I would visit her classroom before and after school and pretend that it was my classroom. I always pictured myself going into the education field, too,” she said.
Today, Ciasullo, an educational studies major with an applied behavioral analysis minor, is well on her way to becoming an educator in real life.
In high school, an internship in a special education classroom—where she taught teenagers with severe disabilities and helped them develop life skills—was so fulfilling that Ciasullo realized she wanted to pursue a career in the field. The teacher who supervised her internship, an Endicott alumnus from the Educational Studies program, encouraged her to consider the College. Ciasullo was determined to follow in her footsteps.
After getting an acceptance letter and an offer to join Endicott cheer, Ciasullo arrived at the Nest thinking she had college all figured out.
In reality, she was stepping into the most challenging time in her life.
“I’ve always struggled with anxiety, but the transition to college was very hard,” Ciasullo admitted. “Compared to high school, there was just so much information and so many deadlines coming in all the time. I had to find a way to help my brain manage the stress of it.”
In her first semester, Ciasullo was so overwhelmed that she nearly dropped out. Instead, she took a deep breath and began building a support system on campus. First, she sought out academic coaching at the Endicott Center for Teaching & Learning with director Amy Cohn.
“In every session, we would sit down and look through all my class assignments, break them down into smaller, manageable steps, and brainstorm strategies together. She really helped me to organize everything and find a schedule that worked best for me,” Ciasullo explained.
She also added daily walks around campus, finding that the fresh air calmed her nervous system and gave her a chance to connect with the natural beauty surrounding Endicott.
Whenever she had a question or wanted to talk through a decision, Ciasullo would just walk into the education suite on campus to talk to her mentor, Julie Calzini, Myrt Harper Rose ’56 Dean of the School of Education. All of her professors’ doors were left open, and they’d look up from their computers to say hello.
“Dean Calzini would hear my voice from down the hall and call me into her office just to check in and see how everything was going. Everyone in that department was just so welcoming,” she said.
By the end of that challenging year, Ciasullo had built a support system that not only helped her cope but also gave her the structure she needed to soar.
During her time at Endicott, Ciasullo ultimately completed four internships in local public schools—two of them in her hometown of Woburn at the same high school she graduated from.
“These internships and my semester of student teaching have been my favorite part of my Endicott experience,” she said. “I’ve learned so much by building connections with students in classroom settings and getting to see firsthand what goes on behind the scenes in teaching.” That involved everything from teaching a class how to play pickleball to curating individualized behavior plans tailored to help each student grow.
Junior year, Ciasullo worked in a postgraduate program at Woburn High that particularly shaped the future path she now envisions for herself as an educator. Geared toward recent high school graduates with severe disabilities, the hands-on class focused on teaching young adults functional life skills and taking them on visits to job sites across fields to build the confidence to imagine their own future career moves.
“These students would come into the classroom every day with the most heartwarming smiles, ready to work, learn, and grow. It would brighten my day just to be around them, and it has motivated me and made me excited to become an educator,” she said. As a classroom leader, Ciasullo realized that the challenges she’s overcome in her own life, like learning to live with anxiety, only made her more empathetic when her students grappled with issues of their own.
After graduation, Ciasullo plans to work full-time in a school while pursuing Endicott’s M.Ed. in Severe Disabilities program. Ultimately, she imagines herself running her own life skills classroom for students ages 19-22—maybe even back home in Woburn.
“My main goal as a teacher is to give my students the tools and functional skills they need to be as independent as possible and to help them shine as members in the community,” she said.