EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY
All children can learn and all children learn differently in either small or large degrees. A good teacher learns each student’s abilities and strengths through information gathering with parents, other teachers, formal and informal assessments and working one-on-one with the student. Using this information, the teacher can use specific instructional strategies that work best for each student.
Using a scaffolding approach, the teacher finds an instruction approach where a student has strength then builds upon the continued success of the student. Through modeling, guiding and providing feedback, the teacher can gradually withdraw from the student’s dependent learning until independent learning is mastered.
EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
As a child I loved school and in fourth grade had the Ah-ha moment of realizing the way to always be in school and learning was to become a teacher. College was wonderful and it took me a while to decide what I wanted to teach, but science was where my biggest passion was, so I got my licensure in teaching biology as an undergrad.
I soon became interested in how people learn, and how I can be an even better teacher so I got further degrees in curriculum, instruction, and reading. Now, about three decades later, I am out of the classroom, but love teaching one on one again, and helping children and young adults who want to become even better students.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
My first teaching experience was during the early 1990’s in a challenging middle school in Minneapolis. The students came from all cultures and across economic levels, but most were living in poverty. Those six years taught me a great deal about patience, working with parents as partners in their child’s education, and viewing each student as an individual who comes to school with a life already full of joys, hopes, and fears to name only a few issues and emotional states.
As I went onto suburban high schools, elementary schools, working with students with different abilities during summer school assignments, I learned about the need for profound compassion toward all my students. I have worked with students who went onto earning their masters.
EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
In the first decade of my teaching I was on many committees in school such as advising clubs, activities before and after school, and putting programs together for cultural and different group awareness. Then I devoted my time after school to working with students who needed extra help with their work, going to sports games my students participated in, especially if I knew they had a caregiver who would not or could not attend. I also spent extra time I had working hard to find ways to teach to reach even the most stubborn of learners.
