Joy Marcus hails from London, Ontario, Canada.  She holds dual Canadian and American citizenship thanks to the fact that her mother was born in Amarillo, Texas. Joy’s lifelong love of languages was kindled when her parents enrolled her in the French Immersion program at their local public school. She later became interested in learning Spanish while studying at Western University and then interrupted her formal education to spend a year living in Santiago, Chile. After completing her Bachelor of Science in Biology, Joy went on to earn a Bachelor of Education, followed by two years gaining invaluable experience as a substitute teacher for the public school board in her hometown.

In 2009, Joy’s travel adventures continued when she moved to Brazil where she learned Portuguese while working at Esfera Escola Internacional. Over the course of the next six years she was trained as a Primary Years Program teacher and grew in her practice of inquiry-based learning while acting as a lead English teacher in each of the primary grades. Joy was also delighted to play an instrumental role in helping students develop a love for reading as a specialist library teacher for first through fifth grade students.

In 2015, Joy began teaching at Magellan as the first grade English teacher. She soon became fascinated and intrigued by a subset of students who, despite great effort on their part, struggled to acquire basic reading and writing skills within the regular classroom. Motivated by an acute desire to help these students succeed, she embarked on a journey to learn how to teach reading and writing using an explicit, multisensory and systematic approach, becoming a fully qualified Certified Academic Language Therapist (CALT) through the Academic Language Therapy Association in the fall of 2022.

Joy is thrilled to have transitioned into the role of Language Specialist where she provides reading intervention classes to students in first, second and third grade who need specific support to become independent readers and writers. She is passionate about children and feels incredibly fortunate to be a part of the Magellan community.

Outside of school, Joy loves gathering around food with friends, running Austin trails with her dog, Mr. Darcy, and engaging in a variety of ever-changing creative endeavors.