Proudly Lab: Alumni Highlight Series - Davis FitzGerald ’18
Davis FitzGerald (’18) is transforming the lives of middle schoolers by bringing the same empathy and advocacy he learned at Lab into his own special education classroom. Read how this Vassar and GW grad transitioned from a curious student to a dedicated educator fighting for the next generation of diverse learners.
Davis FitzGerald (’18) is a Special Education Teacher in Social Emotional Special Education Services for Montgomery County Public Schools. Whether creating lessons on math, social studies or life skills, Davis pays attention to the individual needs of his middle school-aged students, encourages them to think outside the box, and ensures there are multiple avenues for them to demonstrate their understanding. He says these are just some of the ways that he has carried Lab’s approach to education into his professional life.
It was the fall of 2007 when a 7-year-old Davis joined the Lab community. To this day, he remembers Neela Seldin, Lab’s Head of Lower School at the time, as a “constant positive example who didn’t treat you like a bad kid if you were having a bad day.” As his skills in reading and writing developed through his intermediate and junior high years, aided in part by Speech Language Therapist Donna Pavluk, Reading teacher Susie Wolk, and English teacher Peter Beck, so did his self-confidence. His growing love for reading and his intellectual curiosity served him well in Lab’s Upper School, at debate tournaments, Model UN conferences, and American University's Ethics Bowls. Particularly interested in American history and politics, following junior year Davis completed a college-level international relations course at AU that focused on the part culture plays in political conflict. Then, for his senior thesis, Davis examined Hamilton and Star Trek as American epics. Davis loved performing on Lab’s stage, traveling with Lab to see the Pompeii he’d read about in his Latin texts and to Hawaii as his environmental consciousness expanded, and mentoring younger students as an Eye to Eye Chapter Co-Leader. Armed with his copy of the Constitution, carefully annotated during his US History and Government classes with James Bullock, Davis enrolled at Vassar College in the fall of 2018, earning his undergraduate degree in Political Science and Government in 2022. In 2025, Davis earned his Master of Arts in Special Education for Children with Emotional and Behavioral Disabilities from The George Washington University.
This summer, in addition to well-deserved down time cheering on the Nats and playing Magic: The Gathering, Davis will volunteer his time calling congressmen and senators to advocate for children in special education. Davis knows the transformative power of an education like the one he received at Lab and shares, “I have an overwhelming outpouring of love for the people who helped me at Lab and for my time at Lab. They helped me identify strengths and weaknesses and learn to compensate. They taught me technology I would use for the rest of my life and advocacy skills for college and work. I believe very strongly in Lab’s mission of helping students who need support to learn, students who need to be understood.”
