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WNY Maritime Charter Middle School, Buffalo, NY

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WNY Maritime Charter Middle School, Buffalo, NY

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Maritime provided the opportunity to create my own learning environment for the first time. From a single classroom, I taught 7th and 8th grade Spanish, 7th and 8th grade ESL, and 8th Grade Computer Technology. Creating a space that met the needs of these diverse classes posed a unique challenge, but also allowed me to experiment with classroom organization, furniture arrangement, routines, lighting, sound, colors, and even textures. The result has been a deeper understanding of the ways in which environmental factors can be monitored and manipulated to increase student engagement, decrease anxiety, and streamline the teaching-learning-growing process.

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As well as experimenting with space, I have enjoyed experimenting with innovative projects, activities, and class structures. I try as much as possible to move away from traditional notes and involve students in their own learning, whether that happens through interactive games, group work, multi-media projects, or self-directed project-based learning units. My goal is to keep working to find the next great thing to sparks interest and imagination, making my lessons relevant and exciting for my students.

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It is important to me to connect and interact with students outside of the classroom. We see each other in different environments that provide us with varied opportunities to show what we can do. In Board Game Club, I focus on games that require teamwork, strategy, creative problem-solving, and ingenuity. Nothing makes me more proud than when students take ownership and teach their peers a new game or lead their group in a bold new strategy. These social skills are something they can develop and take with them into all other aspects of their life.

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Niagara Falls High School, Niagara Falls, NY

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Niagara Falls High School, Niagara Falls, NY

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These students required both ESL and ELA credit hours, so I collaborated with my cooperating teacher to create my own units based on The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros and
The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan. Each student received their own folder of notes sheets to make meaning and connections as we read, as well as a character sheet, and a list of themes and literary elements to watch for in the text. Everyday, we read, took and shared notes, discussed, and did a reflective writing piece to analyze the events of the text and how they connected to the students' lives and experiences.

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A typical lesson plan for The House on Mango Street.

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A Ticket-Out-the-Door, so students can anonymously tell me how they are feeling about the class.

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Students played a Kahoot! online quiz in teams to answer questions about themes and literary elements after the first week of reading.

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A slideshow to front-load concepts before reading the novel.

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A typical lesson plan for The Joy Luck Club.

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Revised notes pages for The Joy Luck Club. This time, we wrote definitions, instead of just discussing concepts orally. The notes pages for both novels were the same.

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This was the students' final project after reading the class novel and writing their own personal narrative vignette.

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LaSalle Preparatory Middle School, Niagara Falls, NY

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LaSalle Preparatory Middle School, Niagara Falls, NY

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A few students were exempt from the ELA because they had been in the U.S. less than a year. Instead, I organized activities and played games that helped them practice their conversational English vocabulary and grammar. Their favorite was Get-to-Know-Me Jenga, in which each student had to read and answer a question about themselves (ie: What food can you cook and how did you learn to cook it?) before taking a piece from the tower.

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Union East Elementary School, Cheektowaga, NY

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Union East Elementary School, Cheektowaga, NY

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Here is a sample of a mini-unit, containing a pre-assessment, plans, activities, and a post-assessment.

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Watch my amazing website created on emaze - The stunning web site builder.

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ENL students and their families were invited to the library after school for an evening of literacy-based games and activities, food, and fun. I loved getting to meet the families of my students! It was a wonderful way to make connections and build relationships.

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This letter comes from my cooperating teacher during my first student teaching placement at Union East Elementary School.

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This letter comes from my previous employer and now father-in-law, George Walker, which he wrote when I applied UB's Graduate School of Education.

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This letter comes from my cooperating teacher during my second student teaching placement at LaSalle Preparatory Middle School and Niagara Falls High School.