Teacher, artist, designer, volunteer, mentor, professional developer, and learner are some of the various roles I have played over the last 20 years as an educator. Of these, the most important is the role of learner. From my beginnings in 1996 as a student teacher, and later head 6th grade gifted and talented Language Arts teacher in Colleyville, Texas to my current role as a 3rd grade associate teacher at the Dalton School in New York, education intern at the American Museum of Natural History, and graduate student of Curriculum and Instruction at Bank Street College, I continuously seek new and innovative ways to create stimulating learning environments in which my students can discover the world around them, find solutions to any problem, and become more independent thinkers and risk takers. Meaningful arts and social studies integration has always been a driving factor in my curriculum design. Utilizing recently developed technological tools, art history, primary historic sources, museum studies, observational sketching, as well as past and present educational research findings, I strive to help my students seek relationships between diverse ideas and to create authentic connections from the curricular content to their own lives. As a lifelong learner, I hope to model the path between wonder and awareness for generations of students to come.
Listed skills include Curriculum Design, Teaching, Educational Technology, Classroom, and 13 others.