I have a tribe of three. I am a single mother to a 12-year-old daughter, Taylor. I love being a mother - I am in awe of my child, every single day. My other two rascals are a cat (Mildred) and a pug (aptly named Pugsley).
 
For most of my adult life, I have been fascinated by human development and behavior. This passion was initially satisfied through a career in human resources which spanned about 12 years. After having my daughter, this interest narrowed into childhood development. After discovering the Montessori approach to education, I knew that not only did my daughter need to go to a Montessori school, but a career change for me was necessary. My daughter has been Montessori educated since she was 3 years old. As for myself, I am going into my 7th year of teaching now at a Montessori school. Best decision ever. 

 

Unfortunately, I don’t recall any memories of learning how to read. That said, I do remember ‘boasting’ (in jest) to others as a young adult that I had to repeat Kindergarten as I still didn’t know how to read or write. The reality, however, is that I moved schools and am a December baby, so it made sense to my mother to start afresh from the start.
 
When I reflect on myself as a reader, with what I’ve learned about reading development, I can confidently say that I was not taught phonics nor had focused development on phonemic awareness. A lot of my vocabulary was learned through silent reading, figuring out word meanings through context instead of oral discussion. Before becoming a teacher, my approach when coming across new words was to focus on word meaning. I never really cared about proper pronunciation, as it was only me ‘hearing’ the words as a read in my head. This resulted in a disparity between my written and spoken vocabulary given the lack of connections. Still to this day, I find myself skimming past names without taking the time to ‘hear’ what the word should sound like.
 
I consider myself to be a lifelong learner. I always enjoy learning new things, particularly when it can help me become a better parent and educator. I am taking this Master’s degree to become better equipped to support my students - those with exceptionalities and also those without.

My name is Krista Flanagan and I just graduated from Endicott in May with a degree in Liberal Studies Education and a concentration in Early Childhood Education, I am currently getting my Masters in Moderate Disabilities. This upcoming school year I will be doing a fellowship at Proctor Elementary School in Topsfield working with special education students in grades 4th-6th.

I do not remember a whole lot about the process of learning to read at school, but what I do remember was all of the reading I did at home with my parents and my sisters. Growing up I had those books “I Read to You, You Read to Me” and every night for a long time when I was little I would read one of them before going to bed with either my mom or my dad. Whenever I would struggle on a word my parents would remind me to do my best to sound it out and use the pictures on the pages to help me, and they also always encouraged me to try again when I did not get it right the first time. It was the time spent with encouragement and a judgement free zone that really helped me learn since I never felt as though I was doing something wrong and that I would be in any kind of trouble for messing up. This was reflected with my teachers at school and the constant freedom to choose books that interested me and the time to read freely.