Reading Evermore

I am working on my 27th year as a third grade teacher in Mont Belvieu, Texas, and I still love it! Coming from parents that were both teachers, I tried to fight it as long as I could, but my destiny was to help children love learning. Over the years I have taught fourth grade self-contained and sixth grade science, but I feel like my heart belongs with the third grade kiddos. Even after obtaining my master's degree, I just can't get my heart and soul out of a full time classroom.💓

I feel like part of my unique style in the classroom is building relationships with the students in order for them to trust me with what I'm teaching. When they feel that connection, they are much more interested in the lessons I'm giving, and they want to engage more in the classroom activities. For instance, I sometimes bring in stories of my own personal failures so they understand that I know what it's like for things to be difficult. This especially gives my dyslexic students hope and excitement towards learning! With state testing being a huge factor with stress for these innocents, I try to help alleviate some of it for them by coming up with ways of learning that will give them tools to be more successful. This only builds their confidence, which not only makes them feel good about themselves, but also helps them to apply what they're learning in an effective way. I also enjoy bringing in interesting, real-life situations or trivia to further motivate them during our whole group time. This motivates them to want to read more since there's many awesome things to learn about in our world through reading!

After two exciting, yet grueling years of learning how to create my own reading you tube videos (not to mention LOTS of money), it makes me feel really good knowing that students want to hear a story by watching my videos at home. It took a lot of work (so much that there's not many of them), but they are definitely in need of some tweaking! Fortunately, most of the kids don't notice.🙂 That's something I'd love to work on more when I retire! Also, several years ago, two colleagues, and great friends of mine, created a motivational program to help those kiddos having a tough time mastering specific fourth grade academic targets. This program brought our students a lot of success, even though we were teaching in a Title 1 school in Texas City, Texas, which sparked the interest of others! We were invited to a principal's convention in Austin, Texas to present the program two years in a row. We felt very honored to be a part of the TEPSA conference!

After coming to the hard realization that my cosmetology license was not going to support my life-long employment desires like I had planned, I began substituting and fell in love with teaching through a long term sub position. I began college at twenty six and graduated from University of Houston Clear Lake. After a couple of years of teaching, my two colleagues that I mentioned earlier and myself decided to go for our Master's in Educational Administration Degree. We all three graduated two years later. Whew! That was tough while teaching all day and having families, but we persevered!