Hello! Welcome to my self-portrait.
Growing up, school didn’t come easily to me. It took time for me to develop strategies that worked for me to be successful. I up in a small town in Kansas known for its college basketball. I spent my time growing up in dance lessons and on my grandparent’s farm.
Growing up attending a Montessori School helped me love learning, despite facing learning challenges. When I transferred to a traditional public middle school, I struggled to find the same joy in my schoolwork. In high school, I fell in love with stem classes such as AP Environmental Science, and AP Statistics. Outside of school, I enjoyed Speech and Policy Debate. When I began to take standardized tests for college admissions, my love for math and science quickly floundered. I decided to stick with what I knew I was good at – writing and the arts.
Becoming a teacher has been the most transformative year of my life by helping me reframe my identity as a learner. Encouraging my students to explore the world around them has made me immensely more curious about the world I live in. If you had asked me before this program how I felt about science, I would have said “I’m not really a science person”. Now, science is my favorite subject. This newfound curiosity is a gift from my students that I will forever be grateful for.
When I’m not teaching or prepping lessons, I enjoy roller skating, rock climbing, cooking, coaching debate, and listening to podcasts on structured literacy.