William J. Fassbender spent his first 18 years living in Pennington, NJ. It was there where he first learned the power and potential of education. His father was science and PE teacher turned college professor at The College of New Jersey in the department of Health and Counselor Education and his mom worked as a school nurse and nurse practitioner in schools while moonlighting in private practice. He learned what it meant to work hard during his middle and high school years, developing his skills as a drummer and pianist, which still informs his ability to look at issues in creative ways.
After graduating from Hopewell Valley Central High School in 2004, he would attend the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he would earn a BA in English Literature and an MAT in Secondary English Education. Through the guidance of professors who invested in him, both as a teacher and person, he began to understand how teaching is a high stakes endeavor. Will would start his student teaching at Laney High School in Wilmington, NC (the school notorious for cutting Michael Jordan from the JV basketball team) and complete it in San Pedro, Belize. During both experiences, he began to develop a sense of value in both culture and technology and considering how both impact each other recursively—at Laney he learned to tinker with digital tools, whereas in Belize he honed his pedagogies in a place largely without technology. In that sense, his student teaching would set him on a path of exploration, problem-solving, and innovating with and without technology.
In 2009, he entered the job market at the height of the US financial crisis and begrudgingly accepted a job as a 7th and 8th grade teacher at Charter Day Middle School in Leland, NC. He never wanted to teach middle school and promised himself that he would take the first high school English position that he could find. But, he quickly realized that middle grades teachers and, more importantly, students were his type of people. He was constantly challenged by the day-to-day challenges and successes that are unique to working with young adolescents. He was fortunate to have the support of administration that was both supportive and trusting enough to let Will do his own thing. He would take the lead on several learning initiatives and was always encouraging students to express themselves through various modalities, including podcasting (admittedly before podcasting was cool), video production, blogging, and any other means that honored the knowledge and skills that students brought with them every day to his classroom. In addition to his work with technology, he championed the use of graphic novels in pushing his honors students outside of their traditional literacies comfort areas. Pop culture informed much of the work that Will would end up doing with his students as a means of not only connecting English content to them in important ways, but in connecting with his students to show them that he was invested in them.
In 2014, Will transitioned into a new position as Academic Coach of English Language Arts and Social Studies for grades 3-8 for Charter Day School’s education management group, Roger Bacon Academy, to assist the Dean of Curriculum to preside over their 4 schools as they began incorporating a classical curriculum into the classroom. This experience was powerful, as it reminded Will how much he enjoyed working with teachers at various points in their careers and re-awakened an interest he had once possessed in following in his father’s footsteps in becoming at college professor. His father would pass away in June of 2014 and it was at that time that he decided to apply to graduate schools.
Will would enroll in a PhD program at The University of Georgia in the Department of Language and Literacy Education in order to work under the guidance of Dr. Sara Kajder. Will had admired Dr. Kajder’s work as a classroom teacher, as he viewed her as a trailblazer and luminary in incorporating technology into middle grades classrooms. Thanks to her guidance and the mentorship of other professors, including Drs. Donna Alvermann, Joe Tobin, and Peter Smagorinsky, Will began to understand the research methods and import of studying dynamic classroom spaces.