I grew up in Vista, California, 45 minutes north of San Diego. Both of my parents are teachers; my dad devotedly taught high school chemistry, and my mom continues to teach first grade at the local elementary school. Our basement had a full-size chalkboard and two real school desks, which I utilized to pretend-teach my neighbors and younger brother. To say that my family values education is an understatement. Many of our dinner conversations revolved around what my parents' students said or did that day, the drama of school administration and politics, and how my dad would change education.
Ironically, I decided in my youth not to be a teacher. That is, until I discovered that teaching is my gift and my passion. I studied Elementary Education at Brigham Young University, graduating in 2011. Within that time I also spent a year and a half as a missionary in Brazil, and a semester studying abroad in Israel. Those experiences gave me a love for peoples and cultures, as well as a love for teaching in a variety of contexts. After graduating I taught both 5th and 4th grades. My three years of teaching were wonderful. I loved my students and found meaning, motivation, and fulfillment in my role as teacher. Yet, in my third year, I felt the desire for something more.
I decided to study Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University. During my two year program I had the opportunity to teach at a university level, and found that I loved it just as much as teaching children. I taught three different technology integration courses for elementary education majors, being trusted by my supervisor enough to update the curriculum to reflect the way technology was being used in the elementary classroom. For my masters project I was given the privilege of developing a brand new course and piloting it the semester before I graduated. This was a forward-looking class, training teachers for how technology might be used in the future. We studied online and blended education in elementary settings, seeing how schools are experimenting in these delivery methods, test-driving various software platforms that can be used for online and blended instruction, and using theory to evaluate what we saw.
After graduation I was invited to stay by the Department of Teacher Education, and redesigned their Instructional Design and Assessment course. This is one of the first courses taken by elementary education majors, and forms the backbone that provides structure for the methods courses that follow. With input from colleagues at the university, I redesigned the course to be both theory-driven and practical. I put my students into grade level teams by which grade they said they wanted to teach, gave them each a fake class with unique contextual factors, and taught them how to design instruction and assessments adapted to the needs of their learners. It was a blast!
I then worked as an instructional designer, helping several professors from all over campus (from social work to video game design) redesign their courses. I designed courses using cafeteria-style assessment, gamification, project-based learning, competency-based education, and programmed learning, spanning all delivery modalities. I taught faculty development workshops and even get to teach one university class.
Currently I teach 5th grade. It has been fun to incorporate all of what I have learned in the past four years away from the elementary classroom into my current practice.
Ironically, I decided in my youth not to be a teacher. That is, until I discovered that teaching is my gift and my passion. I studied Elementary Education at Brigham Young University, graduating in 2011. Within that time I also spent a year and a half as a missionary in Brazil, and a semester studying abroad in Israel. Those experiences gave me a love for peoples and cultures, as well as a love for teaching in a variety of contexts. After graduating I taught both 5th and 4th grades. My three years of teaching were wonderful. I loved my students and found meaning, motivation, and fulfillment in my role as teacher. Yet, in my third year, I felt the desire for something more.
I decided to study Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University. During my two year program I had the opportunity to teach at a university level, and found that I loved it just as much as teaching children. I taught three different technology integration courses for elementary education majors, being trusted by my supervisor enough to update the curriculum to reflect the way technology was being used in the elementary classroom. For my masters project I was given the privilege of developing a brand new course and piloting it the semester before I graduated. This was a forward-looking class, training teachers for how technology might be used in the future. We studied online and blended education in elementary settings, seeing how schools are experimenting in these delivery methods, test-driving various software platforms that can be used for online and blended instruction, and using theory to evaluate what we saw.
After graduation I was invited to stay by the Department of Teacher Education, and redesigned their Instructional Design and Assessment course. This is one of the first courses taken by elementary education majors, and forms the backbone that provides structure for the methods courses that follow. With input from colleagues at the university, I redesigned the course to be both theory-driven and practical. I put my students into grade level teams by which grade they said they wanted to teach, gave them each a fake class with unique contextual factors, and taught them how to design instruction and assessments adapted to the needs of their learners. It was a blast!
I then worked as an instructional designer, helping several professors from all over campus (from social work to video game design) redesign their courses. I designed courses using cafeteria-style assessment, gamification, project-based learning, competency-based education, and programmed learning, spanning all delivery modalities. I taught faculty development workshops and even get to teach one university class.
Currently I teach 5th grade. It has been fun to incorporate all of what I have learned in the past four years away from the elementary classroom into my current practice.