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are the people you see in the pictures throughout: My family, my partner, my best friend, Julie, who is also an Early Childhood Educator that works with children birth-5 years old.

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Within 1 year:

Get married

Get a dog :)

Within 3 years:

Get my Masters in Education

Travel to more places abroad

Feel more equipped with Responsive Classroom trainings and readings so I can really apply these practices to my classroom

Feel more comfortable with teaching and establish
a curriculum calendar outline that I can use as a reference each year.

Routinely integrate outdoor education in my classroom

Within 5 years:

Buy a house

Start a family

A timeless aspiration of mine is to just keep growing and learning about how to keep the magic alive in a kindergarten classroom. I want to feel more at ease about balancing a high-standard curriculum with a classroom culture of exploration and enchantment. Hence, there is our classroom gnome, Fizzlewicks to the right.

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Winning “Best Community of the Year” as a Residential Advisor.

Being initiated into Mortar Board Honor Society.

Being asked to go to DC for the “Future Educators of America” conference.

Graduating UVM with a Bachelor's Degree in Early Childhood Education Magna Cum Laude.

Receiving an award at graduation.

Getting a teaching job right out of college.

Finishing my first year of teaching and still loving it.

Raising money for a class set of snow pants for children to use on our "Woods Days."

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Now, at the start of this graduate program, I am in my second year of teaching in Eden. I love my job, but currently have a very difficult class. Even considering last year was my first year ever of teaching, those behaviors were much easier to deal with than now.

Because of this class, I really had to push myself out of my comfort zone in terms of behavior management and new routines. At times, I felt as though some of my Early Childhood philosophies and principles were falling apart because of how often I had discipline students for challenging behaviors.

I am currently engaged to be married to my best friend in June of 2018. I am lucky to have found someone who is also a teacher and understands the day to day frustrations that come with the job. We often find ourselves venting about school over the dinner table. He is the most supportive and loving man who can also provide me with pointers and suggestions, considering he has 5 years of teaching experience under his belt.

I still have a very supportive family and it is starting to expand. Two of my brothers are engaged and my first niece was born this past year. She will be

I believe myself to be a very kind and caring person. I am nurturing. I am a feeler. I am an enthusiastic learner and I am playful. I enjoy reading, journaling, and anything outdoors: kayaking, biking, running, swimming, and skiing. I also enjoy rock climbing on rainy days and playing my ukulele. I am not that great musically, but it is something I hope to get better at.

I strongly believe in getting children outdoors and exploring the natural world in an unstructured way. Much of our classroom community this year was built outside in our school woods, building fairy houses, taking risks with our bodies, collecting natural materials, and writing stories outside on clipboards. I hope to expand this way of teaching in the years to come.

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I was born into a very loving family with three older brothers and two parents who were supportive and nurturing. We grew up in a rather conservative Christian household. My father was a college professor and always made sure we knew how important it was to have a good education. My mother was a stay-at-home mom who often volunteered in our classrooms and made sure we had what we needed to be successful in school.

It was never a question that I would go to college. Though my parents were always supportive of any big dreams we may have had, they also taught us how important a college degree would be in attaining those life goals. Even my older brother, who pursued a musical career, made sure he had a degree to fall back on in case his dream did not pan out.

In 3rd and 4th grade, I had a “Personal Project,” where I got to choose a profession I wanted to explore and learn more about to share with the class. Both years I chose teaching. For the first project, I chose to go back to my 1st and 2nd grade teacher’s classroom and do an art craft with the first graders. She let me lead the lesson. The second year I chose to shadow my father during a day of teaching college classes. My brothers filmed me in his class pretending to be a newsworthy gifted 4th grader who was ready to excel in college level courses. My father had given me answers to the questions he would ask that morning and I still remember college students all looking shocked. It was in these years, I started to really think about teaching as a future career. It also helped that I adored my 3rd and 4th grade teacher, Ms. Hepp, who assigned this project. She was a terrific teacher who challenged me academically and also mediated many social conflicts with my friend group those years. I met up with her the spring of my senior year in college to discuss teaching and my job interviews at the time. It was nice to know I could still view her as a mentor.

Other mentors throughout my childhood came into my life through church and youth group. These were big influences in my life until I went to college and began questioning some of my beliefs. In my studies, I found some more incredible mentors in my professors and mentor teachers. Sonia Clark, my student teaching mentor played a big role in how I viewed myself as a teacher. I remember being nervous, as a rather soft spoken and nurturing person, to see how I would do in a teaching role. Sonia was very similar to me and was a wonderful model for me to see how to balance clear expectations and logical consequences with a nurturing teaching style.

I finished school while applying to teaching jobs for K-1 positions. That July, I was lucky enough to land a kindergarten job in Eden, VT and quickly thereafter moved about 15 minutes away from the school.