Valerie Mcbride Taft Email & Phone Number

I was born to be a teacher- a teacher of stuffed animals, a teacher of students, a teacher of adults. I was designed to teach.After graduating from college, I secured my first teaching job, and happily spent almost a decade educating young children in an elementary classroom. As I was providing young students with opportunities to build a strong educational foundation I was also refining my own professional skills in organizational management, relationship building, collaboration, and data analysis. As a lifelong learner, my passion and desire to collaborate, lead, design curriculum, and extend the power of learning beyond the 4 walls of my classroom has grown exponentially. My teaching experience has expanded to providing professional development for teachers, leading teaching teams in data analysis to plan effective instruction, and designing an intervention system to meet the needs of a growing elementary school. Additionally, I have led professional development for paraprofessionals, coached student teachers, and facilitated our school wide intervention team committee. I am experienced in learning design, assessment development, curriculum development, leading professional development, project management, and learning models. I am seeking new opportunities to continue to cultivate a culture of vulnerability, design and deliver instruction, and collaborate to meet organizational goals.I am trained in Thinking Collaborative’s Cognitive Coaching and Adaptive Schools.In addition to my work as a classroom teacher, I am also the founder of Bear and Bug Learning. I started Bear and Bug learning to develop high quality educational materials for teachers that combine research based practices with developmentally appropriate learning structures.