Anthony McCann taught English at Shenendehowa High School for 35 years and was the first Policy Board Chair and a founding member of the Greater Capital Region Teacher Center with education leaders from the Capital District School Administrators Association and the University at Albany. Among his many roles in representing teaching professionals, he has served as a member and as the Chair of the Teacher Education and Certification Practices Board (TECAP), a member of the Commissioner’s Task Force on Teaching as a Profession, and as the first teacher member of the Greater Capital District Principals Center.

Born in Ireland, Tony came to Long Island when he was 15 and after graduating from Long Beach High School with a BOCES Electronics certificate and a Regents Diploma, served in the United States Army Signal Corps in Italy. He then earned a BA with a dual major in History and English from Stony Brook University, followed by an MA in English Literature from the University at Albany. Tony was inspired by teachers he observed while in his first teaching assignments as an assistant teacher in the Head Start Program in Harlem and as a member of the National Teacher Corps in West Virginia.  

At Shenendehowa, Tony taught a full range of English electives and a course on the Literature of the Holocaust that he helped to develop and taught for over twenty years. Tony later developed and taught an expanded curriculum for a course entitled Literature of the Oppressed. This course has been extremely important to him as he has had a lifelong commitment to promoting civil and human rights for all.

Throughout his professional teaching career, Tony has been recognized for his teaching and has received numerous awards including teacher recognition for the annual Capital District Scholar Recognition award numerous times. Tony was also twice selected to participate in the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Fellowship for Teachers to study the literature of Joseph Conrad and the poetry of William Butler Yeats. After retiring from Shenendehowa, Tony mentored student teachers in their local school district placements for the Russell Sage College Master of Arts in Teaching program.  

Tony served as President and Officer of the Shenendehowa Teachers Association and a Board Member of the New York State United Teachers, and has continued in the role of teacher advocate for more than four decades. Tony encourages all teachers to become deeply involved in their profession beyond the classroom. He is opposed to the current test driven teaching model that he asserts makes children anxious rather than inspired, and often stifles their natural love of learning in schools, where a ‘data driven’, rather than ‘data informed’, philosophy prevails.

Tony feels strongly that a deep knowledge of subject matter, combined with passionate enthusiasm for communicating that knowledge, is essential to good teaching. He notes that a good teacher must realize that continuing professional development is essential. “Teaching is not a job; it’s a vocation; there’s always something to learn”. Tony realizes that teaching in today’s classrooms  has  become much more demanding physically and emotionally. His philosophy of teaching is summarized  by his poet hero William Butler Yeats who insisted that: “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.”