“I definitely was a kid who wanted to be a teacher growing up.”
MY JOURNEY SO FAR
“I went [abroad] for a year and I taught at a multilingual kindergarten (…) Then I moved [back to the U.S.] I worked at a public school teaching second grade—lots of English learners as well in that class. And then we moved to [this city] a year later. So each of these was just one year at each place and obviously we've stayed here. I started teaching at a charter school (…). I really didn't like the way that school was run or the management—kind of micromanagement from leadership and how they dealt with children with special needs and behavior problems. So I also left that school after a year to go to my current school (…) and I taught third grade for five years and then second grade for one year. And now I am on maternity leave for a year. I do plan to go back to the same school.”
“I've been in a a co-taught special education class since I've been at this school, so for six years. I really like that.”
MY PRACTICE AS A TEACHER
“I put a lot of importance on classroom management and kind of getting to know the kids, especially being in a co-taught special education classroom—getting to know what kids’ needs are, what's going to help them do their best work. Last year we had a kid who just needed to eat a crunchy snack if he was feeling a little bit overwhelmed and then he was totally fine. So kind of trying to figure those things out is a big part of my everyday teaching, and then I try to make things fun. We've got a new curriculum coming that I piloted last year for reading that is really, really different from the way we were teaching before. And I think teachers were kind of nervous about the change, but I found it to be pretty fun. Just finding opportunities to keep things light and interesting and engage kids in content, asking them lots of questions. Getting them to talk as much as I can is important to me, too. So we do a lot of classroom community stuff, a lot of social emotional learning, rather than just trying to stick to the curriculum.”