Professional Educator
I have spent the last 9 years in the education community, both as a Middle School Social Studies educator, and as a Student Council Facilitator. I pride myself on ensuring my students achieve their highest successes through rigorous academics designed to engage all learning types through a wide range of modalities, differentiated instruction, costumes and a high degree of humor.
Ask me for my education portfolio!
Achievements in Language
Supporting AZMerit/AIMS
I support all measured and critical metrics for student achievement, from learning to read, comprehend and outline informational texts. I encourage personal connections to content in as many ways possible, creating cognitive connections to push short-term learning into long-term knowledge. As a result, our school achieved the second highest rating in Southern Arizona for our test scores.
Building knowledge
Using the tools through begging, borrowing and avoiding stealing!
Students benefit from a modelling; and the same holds true for some of the interesting things we can learn on Pinterest! Each year, we explore a new method of learning, be it taking notes and designing our own “perfect” notebooks, mastering outlining skills, designing glorious PowerPoint presentations, or even mastering SketchNotes. Students gain experience in different systems so they are informed enough to choose their own “best” method.
Developing study habits
Study and Organizational Skills
Learning how to “Student” doesn’t always come easily, and often, as students ourselves, we teachers spend a great deal of time using different methods of mastering our own workload. Why not teach these strategies to our students?
Students benefit from learning basic organizational skills, blocking study time, and even prioritizing their tasks. Even more importantly, they learn to use technology to help them out with this!
Holistcally inspiring the whole student
Identifying At-Risk Students for help
As much as we’d like to think that all students access cirricula easily, we all know that there are a variety of mitigating factors that impact learning; things as complicated as dyslexia and learning difficulties, to something as simple as missing breakfast. Sometimes, these challenges emerge for students in behavioral problems, in others it may come out as anxiety. My students have actively engaged in developing peer provided- Empact AZ supervised outreach, and with the help of our Administrative team at Great Expectations Academy, identified no less then 10 at-risk students for depression, anxiety and a variety of other mental health issues.
Teaching through experiences
Simulations and Costumes
Often, students view history as removed - not as a story their own family members participated in. My students are encouraged to participate in a variety of dress-up opportunities focused around specific events, time frames and regions. Students participate in Talk/Dress like a Pirate Day, Steampunk Day, Civil War Dress up day, and 1900’s Decade Days.
We also spend 7th grade recreating Civil War, WWI and WWII battle simulations, complete with matching mortality (simulated) rates.
Technology standards
Mastering Computers (and computer etiquette!)
While technology is quickly integrating into daily life, sometimes the personal responsibility elements require practice in safe, monitored arenas. To that effect, students participate in a hybrid classroom hosted through Google Education Suite, where students access learning materials, post assignments, engage with peers to collaborate on assignments and chat for homework help.
Community Service
8th Graders CAN change the world!
Compliant with the new Social Studies standards for Arizona, students are now required to complete a community service project of their choice over the course of an entire year. To date, students have cleaned 5 roadways around Sahuarita, provided food to homeless veterans at 2 different shelters, brought an F-150 truckload of toys to displaced migrant children for Christmas, engaged in 50+ hours of volunteering at local animal shelters and learned invaluable leadership skills.
Student life
Why can’t school be awesome?
My students routinely engage in hi-jinks, and are encouraged to come up with new and inventive ways to engage themselves and peers to build school spirit. To date, we’ve have Water wars, The Great Silly String Incident of 2018, and have discovered their very own Fairy Goth Mother, and her very odd brand of magic.
Students run everything that leads to school spirit, from creating dances and special events, to making sure no one student feels left out. We are a team, and we all only succeed when all of us spend time lifting each other up to higher levels.