"I have been involved in education for over 25 years, and my specialty involves all content areas within English Language Arts. At the beginning of my career, I worked as a speech-language pathologist in a hospital setting with children and adolescents who had experienced neurological impairments primarily due to head trauma; however, I also worked with children who had to relearn how to read, write, process verbal language, and speak due to other neurological issues, such as having a stroke. I loved helping my patients work to regain independence in their communication, reasoning, writing, and reading skills to the level which allowed them to return to the school setting.

After a few years of working exclusively with neurologically affected patients in the hospital setting to regain the abilities they once had, I knew I had to take my passion for teaching those same skills of reading, writing, and processing written information to the regular education classroom. By this time, I was a married mother to three wonderful children. Despite the challenges of obtaining my degree to work in the general education classroom while meeting my growing family's demands, I worked diligently to earn my teaching degree. I turned my dream of being a classroom teacher into a reality.

As a classroom teacher who has taught for over 20 years in grades 3-6, I never hesitate to modify how I teach the content to allow each of my students to comprehend the material more thoroughly. Meeting every student at their level was always second nature for me because that was the foundational background I had learned and used previously as a speech-language pathologist. Teaching students by finding ways to meet their individual needs is my strength and what I enjoy most about being a general education teacher. I love being a classroom teacher, and my speech pathology background has always helped me excel at using creativity and different approaches to help my students feel successful." less...