Blake High School Spotlight: The New ACES Coach, Ms. Dadzie

Due to the recent departure of Dr. Mekonen from the Blake ACES Coach position, which came from a recent promotion within the organization. Since Dr. Mekonen is now gone, a new ACES Coach was needed for the Blake ACES program. Personally referred by Dr. Mekonen herself, Ms. Dadzie is now the new ACES Coach for all future juniors and seniors in the program. She was very qualified for the position, as she has worked as an admissions counselor for Delaware State University, worked as a college advisor for two public schools in the D.C public school system, and has a master’s degree in school counseling, and has worked for ACES for over 10 years.

Ms. Dadzie was very willing to do an interview, and this serves as a way to get her name out there and help upcoming 9th and 10th grade students who may be applying to ACES to know her a little better before becoming a part of ACES. 

Ms. Dadzie is originally from Ghana, and for her post-high school education, she went to Smith College because the college does a lot of overseas recruitment. “I had people who went to my high school in Ghana who also went to Smiths, and when it boiled down to it, my decision was between Smiths and Rutgers … I just really wanted to go out of state, and when I visited I fell in love and that’s how I made my decision.”

Before joining ACES, Ms. Dadzie worked for the D.C. CAP program, which helps D.C. public school students with the college admissions and application process. She worked at Benjamin Banneker High School and Friendship Public Charter School.

“I used to work as a college admissions counselor … and I’m like ‘man, I wish I could’ve told you this, this, and this before you applied.’ I recognized that I was reaching students a little bit too late, before I could be making the impact I wanted to.” Said Ms. Dadzie. “So that’s what made me decide to take a step back to the high school level, where I could work with students before they actually had to make a college application.”

Ms. Dadzie always wanted to work with students with high minority populations. “I was recognizing that students didn’t have access to the information they needed to have access to.” This is what lead to why she joined ACES and has been working with them for over 10 years. “ACES is great because it combines counseling, but like college-focused.”. Even though she had a master’s degree in school counseling, she decided not to work as one because she “ didn’t want to deal with all the things, I just wanted to focus on college access.” 

Before becoming Blake’s ACES coach, she used to work at John F. Kennedy High School as the ACES coach there. She currently still works there, although she spends more time working at Blake as of current. “Nothing was really pulling me out of Kennedy except change.” Said Ms. Dazie. “I wanted to learn something new. New population, new set of staff, new way of doing things. But Kennedy was great!”.

The reason why Ms. Dadzie even wanted to work with high school students was because of access. “When I was in Ghana, I went to an international school that had a heavy focus on going to college. But coming here, even with the information I had, there were still gaps in what I knew.” Ms. Dadzie continued, “just how to access college, how to access money for college, how to pick the right college, things like that.” Because she was a first generation student in the U.S, she “ figured that if I was struggling, even if I had all the information, I knew that there were plenty of students [who may also be struggling].” Ms. Dadzie further explained that “the college process in America is confusing, man! It’s a lot, it’s heavy. And so I knew that there were a lot of students [who] were in my situation, especially if you have parents that never went to college themselves. So access to college is something I grew to love and be passionate about.”.

The new coach is glad to have this current job opportunity, and is currently getting to know as many current and future ACES students at Blake. She works in the ACES office at room A215, and is in on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays in person.