Ignacia Estrada said, "if a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn." This quote has been the bedrock of my teaching career whether in the classroom, special education, interventionist, tutoring, public or private, elementary or middle school. I’ve always known I wanted to be a teacher and have many inspiring memories.
I earned my bachelor’s degree in 1986 from ACU, and stayed in Abilene, Texas to begin teaching special education in a pull-out setting for six years. After being asked, I changed schools to teach Writing to grades 4 and 5 (departmentalized), then taught grade 4 classroom while going back to school and earning a double master’s degree.
Next, I challenged myself to use my newly earned master’s and moved to beautiful Colorado to become a Literacy Resource Teacher/Coach. A few years later, I missed having my own students and went back to the classroom where I taught grades 3 and 4 and met many life-long friends from cohorts and families. Then I began to feel stagnant from teaching eleven years in the same grade level, so I moved to a school with different stakeholders and taught special education again.
I was encouraged to move to middle school to set up a reading program, and while in middle school, I taught reading intervention one year and special education another year. Suddenly, my mom got very sick, and I was needed in Texas more often. That event brought me to BV as the part-time Reading interventionist. After one year at BV, I’ve been lucky to obtain full-time work as a Reading interventionist and/or Teaching Learning Coach.
Yes, I was born in Dallas, and am a Dallas Cowboys fan! (Sorry, not sorry) Colorado has been very good to me and I’m grateful to learn more and experience this state.