Brief BiographyI have lived my whole life in Michigan and was blessed to know very early in my high school career that I wanted to become a teacher. I really enjoyed learning new concepts and ideas as well as sharing that information with others. I graduated from Clio Area High School in 2008 in the top ten of my class.
I then went to Saginaw Valley State University from 2008 to 2014. During my time at SVSU, I majored in English Education, History Education, and worked to get my Social Studies endorsement. Additionally, I studied Secondary Education and graduated in May of 2014 with a 3.9 GPA. I did my student teaching at Mt. Morris Junior High School in the Mt. Morris Consolidated District in an 8th grade English Language Arts classroom. Afterwards, I moved up to Northeast Michigan and became an English and Social Studies teacher at Hillman Junior/Senior High School in the Hillman Community School Distract for two years. At Hillman, I have taught a great variety of subject and grade levels. I have taught 9th grade English, 10th grade English, 11th grade English, Junior High Creative Writing, Model United Nations, World History, and Current Events. Currently, I teach English and Social Studies at Spirngport High School in Springport, MI part of beautiful Jackson County. Springport is a high poverty rural school that has a fantastic FFA program, a growing AP program, and strong community support. There I have been given many professional development opportunities and have worked to use the MAISA curriculum to meet the needs of our students. During the summer of 2014, I completed the Summer Institute in the Chippewa River Writing Program (CRWP), a branch of the National Writing Project at Central Michigan University. I am honored to serve as a teacher consultant for them as well. I am currently perusing a Master's Degree in Instructional Technology from Saginaw Valley State University. |
My Teaching PhilosophyTeaching is a dynamic and challenging career, but the rewards are endless. The greatest part is working with the talented adolescents that I am privileged to have everyday and helping them to realize their maximum potential. Here are a few of the most important aspects that I have found critical to the success of my classroom.
I believe that first priority we have as teachers is to build strong relationships with our students and create a community in our classrooms. Having an effective culture where students want to come to your classroom, trust you as a teacher, value the learning that occurs there, and can work cooperatively is vital. By achieving this, challenges to your classroom management will be minimal. You can have the world's greatest curriculum, and it won't matter if you don't create a strong learning community in your classroom. When it comes to classroom management and building relationships, I like to use Love and Logic techniques. Additionally, it is very important to offer students choices and shared control of the classroom. By sharing the power with my students when I can, I've found that I end up having more authority and more respect from my students. So when I can, I like to let students chose some of the activities we do. Students learn best through collaboration and discussion paired with constant modeling. Without constant mentoring, students will not understand how do exactly what you are expecting of them. Through collaboration, students are allowed to work together to come up with an answer, which deepens the thinking process an allows them to come up with much more advanced answers. In most English classes, we don't do enough writing (although I don't think we can ever truly do enough of it). Writing is the one of the greatest ways to assess thinking, understanding, and learning. Frequent composition also allows for more growth and student confidence. In Social Studies, I like to follow the inquiry based model, allowing students a chance to explore time periods and events around questions. This teaches them to wonder and analyze documents and reading critically. Teaching them these skills as well as giving them the skills they need to read informational texts effectively will give them the opportunity to succeed in any situation or any time period. Additionally, I believe it is also critical for a staff to work as a team to do the best for our students. We need to work to create strategies, standards, and expectations as a building, grade levels, and departments to help out students succeed. This has to be done with consistency and with administrative support for it the be completely effective. |