This I Believe

I was blessed with both good teachers and truly outstanding teachers in elementary school. In middle and high school, the educational experiences that impacted me the most didn't occur in traditional classroom settings but at summer camp, where I experienced hands-on learning at its best, and at the Governor's School I attended half-day from grades 10-12, where a month of the school year was devoted to scientific research we conducted on our own.

My classroom will be a place that respects students as authors, book reviewers, mathematicians, problem-solvers, scientists, explorers, and individuals. At my Governor's School, students roaming the halls were not cause for alarm because the teachers knew us. They knew that we were on a mission-- to the computer room, to another teacher's lab to get equipment, or even to the student lounge for a snack to keep us going through a rigorous day of working as a scientist would-- no bell schedule or quizzes in sight, but on task because what we were doing was important. We worked hard because our teachers treated us respectfully, instructing us in the scientific method but letting us choose our own question to research, arming us with the tools we needed to be researchers but letting us learn from our mistakes and triumphs as we worked independently.

Students should be learning to value that *process* of learning, not the grade they receive. A numerical score or letter grade has little meaning if students don't know how it was achieved or how to apply their skills across situations and disciplines. As a student, I was proud of a math assignment when I had struggled to solve a real-world problem, like how long it would take for grain to drain from a silo, not when I quickly crunched numbers.

I am a certified Project Learning Tree teacher; this environmental education curriculum "helps students learn how to think, not what to think, about the environment," and I look forward to integrating PLT lessons into my curriculum. I am interested in learning more about other EE programs like Urban Sprouts.

The best language arts experience I had as a student was "translating" a text into a journal, then into an abstract painting, then into a play-- it challenged me in a way no other assignment had. I grew up with a great small-town librarian, who talked to me like I was a peer in the world of books, constantly recommending books to me. I love, love, love really good children's literature, and would rather read Young Adult Fiction by authors like Sarah Dessen, Scott Westerfield and Laurie Halse Anderson than books written for women my age. I fantasize about what my classroom library will look like. It will look inviting and relaxing, a place to curl up and read because reading enriches our lives, not because there's a test on Friday.

Can you tell I can't wait for this fall to come?