Joy Carey

Instructional Leader

Dr. Joy Carey was first introduced to Project Based Learning while searching for ways to meaningfully engage her diverse middle school students in Northern Virginia. She is passionate about student collaboration and creating authentic opportunities for learning and relationship building. One of her favorite classroom activities is conferencing with students to build rapport centered around their writing. Dr. Carey has enjoyed working for Defined Learning since 2021, creating English language arts (ELA) performance tasks, writing video scripts, and developing constructed responses. 

A middle school ELA teacher for two decades, Dr. Carey earned her BA in journalism and her BS in secondary education from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University and recently earned her doctorate in Educational Leadership from Wilkes University. Her research focused on how PBL impacts literacy skills for urban middle school English Learners. Dr. Carey has taught students in grades 6-8 in both rural and urban settings. She has also been an adjunct professor teaching pre-service teachers and graduate students. Currently, Dr. Carey serves as the secondary literacy coach for Arlington Public Schools in Virginia and loves to share ideas with her colleagues about how PBL can transform their classrooms.   

Originally from Long Island, NY, Joy and her husband live outside of Annapolis, MD. She loves to travel, cook, spend time with family, and take her dogs on vacations to the beach.