Make Your Own Sunshine

Wow! I have been teaching for 26 years and all in 1st grade! It feels like I just started some days, but man have I seen a lot of changes in education since I started. We have definitely come a long way. I use a science of reading approach to teaching my students to read. As I was being trained to use Orton-Gillingham strategies, I kept saying, "I wish I had known this when I started." I told my husband when I started that I wanted to earn my Educational Specialist degree and become a National Boards Certified Teacher. Well toss in two softball loving girls and that dream went on the backburner for a while. My girls are now grown, and I have finally taken the time to achieve my dreams. I completed my Ed. S. in 2021, and in December of 2025, I achieved National Board Certification.

My resources aim to promote a love of learning and self-confidence as students build on prior knowledge to gain mastery in reading and math. In reading, I teach with a Science of Reading approach to learning. I had a young future educator observing me, and I loved seeing the look on her face when my students explained different rules and exceptions for the English language. She said "Wow! I never knew that!" Education has come a long way in the past 26 years! With the help of a wonderful math coach, I am learning to dig deeper into each math standard to push my students to really meet the standard. She often jokes that my team of teachers and I dug so deeply into patterns that we could teach a workshop on the standard. I love to sprinkle in fun, creative activities based on science and social studies skills throughout my comprehension lessons for reading. My students learn about the world around them starting with our community, county, state and country and then expand to learn more about different countries and continents through fairy tales, tall tales, fables, studying ancient civilizations in the Middle East and Egypt, and an arctic animal study. We spend the month of January learning about arctic animals, build graphic organizers about each animal in our study, and each child writes an informational book about the arctic animal of their choosing using information gathered during our studies. We study important figures in history and even find creative ways reenact events such as explorers trying to find a new trade route to the East Indies and the Shot Heard Round the World (with a paper ball fight) to help students build a strong knowledge-based foundation. It is so amazing to see my students explain the significance of The Great Pyramids or the Sphinx and information about their creation while showing parents artwork of the pieces or to have students come in telling the class what they learned at home with their parents about a topic we are currently studying. Each Spring, we work to improve a garden located in our school's outdoor classroom. Then we incubate eggs in our classroom charting the changes every couple of days until our baby chick's hatch. It is a big event that gets us student visitors from many different grade levels to see our new chicks or to check the changing development of the eggs.

National Boards Certified Teacher

I graduated from the University of West Alabama with my Educational Specialist degree in 2021. I obtained my undergraduate degree from Jacksonville State University and my Master's Degree from the University of Alabama. I have continued my learning by completing the LETRS training for Elementary Education and by attending Orton Gillingham workshops conducted by IMSE. I am Alabama Reading Initiative (ARI) and Alabama Math Science and Technology Initiative (AMSTI) trained as well as attended a host of other professional development opportunities.

I am happily married (28 years) with two beautiful daughters, 2 sons-in-laws, and four fur babies. Four years ago, my teaching colleagues and I decided to incubate chicken eggs with our 1st graders. We have continued this practice each year since, and I currently have 25 feathered friends living in a barndominium in my backyard.