What I thought about teaching only 5 years ago...

From the moment I enter the classroom in late-August to set up to the last few days after fifth grade graduation cleaning up, my teaching comes from the heart. I connect with each of my students as they were my own children, advocating for each of them as my family and service providers advocated for me in my young life.

I grew up in a single-parent household in Paterson, NJ with a "village" of grandparents, aunts, and uncles to help raise me. To add to the complexity of my living situation, I grew up with many delays and difficulties including my physical development and my speech development. Though my physical delays weren't delays anymore once I hit kindergarten-age, I still struggled with major speech disabilities, which required me to receive daily speech therapy from when I was a Head Start student up until grade 6.

I believe I was able to progress past any of my disabilities growing up due to the work of my wonderful family and the numerous service providers I had throughout my education journey. As a child, I had a number of passionate special education teachers, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and speech therapists. Through their work and their advocating for me throughout my years at school, I was able to make tremendous progress and achieve academic honors throughout elementary, middle, and high school.

As a special education teacher, one of my main passions about my career is to advocate for my students as my service providers advocated for me over my academic journey. Throughout my seven years, I have advocated for all my students (who have special needs or not) in various ways.

• Consistent communication between parents and I via e-mail and face-to-face conversations kept all of us on the same page and allowed for open conversations on how best we can support their children. 
   
• Detailed and personalized individualized education plans (IEPs) give parents, current/future service providers, and current/future teachers a snapshot of who the student is at academically, socially, and physically and gives many classroom management considerations (i.e. visuals, desk placement, checklists, etc) that would work best for each student.
   
• Consistent tracking and conferencing allows me to get a stronger understanding of where each student is academically while also helping my students and I develop an open and honest dialogue about their academic progress and how to get better. 
   
• Finally, passionately and enthusiastically-given lessons connect my students to each lesson I give, partner in, or assist in by using personal examples around their neighborhood or even their own interests (i.e. creating word problems involving a student's interest). In addition, via Classroom Champions, I am able to infuse the impact of my classroom's athlete mentor along with character-focused attributes into my given lessons throughout the school year.