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My educational philosophy
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Before attending Buckingham browne & Nichols High School, I attended public, charter, and catholic schools. With these different experiences surrounding education, I have come to believe that creating high expectation, demonstrating patience, listening actively, and loving my students openly are my core practices. These four practices have evolved over a decade of summers at Brantwood Camp for Girls in numerous director positions. Through internships from my time at Lake Forest College working with incarcerated youth in Chicago, immigrant youth greater Chicago area through nonprofits, and research opportunities examining the concerns of students and other individuals who have felt marginalized from the spaces they occupy have expanded my parameters of what education is.
I attended UCLA, where I received my M.eD. Within my two year program in addition to earning my California Preliminary Multi-Subject Teaching Credential. I was a student teacher, and I taught in my own classroom full-time. However, my favorite part of the program besides working with the students, was the social justice focus. Social justice is not only centered around what is taught within in a class, but how it is taught. Is my classroom student centered? What does choice look like? Are voices ever suffocated and is the teacher the cause? Are differences among students and teacher alike encouraged or discouraged in my classroom? These are the questions I ask myself in and outside of my classroom.
From when I was born, through my youth, I was told, "you could not, you should not, you will not be, you are not enough" by different educators.
Luckily, there were also educators who knew it was more than just a tough day. I want to remind my students who felt like me or heard the horrible things meant to discourage them that there are educators out there rooting for them.
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My 3 pillars of teaching
Project
based
learning
Student-centered lessons exploring real world problems and situations using the classroom as a safe space to explore and imagine.
Social Emotional practices
Student-centered lessons dedicated to understanding and managing emotions, and lessons developing students' moral compass.
Culturally Responsive Approaches
student-centered lessons created from students' capital along with funds of knowledge gathered from their communities.
how does your story begin?
1st Grade
Lesson Plan
This lesson was performed in the final months of my student teaching. I had the beautiful opportunity to work with 1st graders, the hardest and most curious of students. They make you work for their attention, you must be succinct, engaging, and timely.
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My sister came to visit my classroom. She is many shades lighter than I and my students noticed. Asked many question and stating that we couldn't be related because we did not look the same. As my sister and I sat shoulder to shoulder a student lightly touched her own face and stated she was not beautiful because she was dark. other students followed touching their face and discussing amongst themselves about standards of beauty. my sister and i pushed and inserted love but as i looked out at the rivers of color, the most diverse class racially, ethnically, and skin tone shades this lesson began to form.
writing is a necessity and something we practiced everyday, while social studies was only introduced in units. this discussion gave me the perfect opportunity to talk about race, color, and self love through stories and paint.
What is an ONOMATOPOEIA?
3rd
Grade Lesson Plan
This lesson was performed in the middle of my 4th year of teaching. I was teaching internationally located in Guangzhou, china at an international school through the GRIGG Program. Living and teaching abroad was difficult and joyous. everyday was a new lesson, a new discovery, a new cultural experience.
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I had the pleasure of teaching 3rd graders multiple subjects. Learning a new language is a dance. My students were shy and sometimes nervous to hear themselves speak or even sing. It was my job to create comfort and normalize those emotions throughout every lesson. feelings are okay.
This lesson developed when I started bringing in different media to develop various literary skills. We began to learning inferencing from Toy Story and rhyming from songs I would sing in class. In addition to me being their first African American teacher, my hair became a constant topic of conversation leading to lessons in similes, metaphors, personification, and ultimately the onomatopeia.
Cultural Appropriation? Cultural Appreciation? Cultural Exchange?
8/9th
grade
lesson
plan
This lesson was performed right before COVID-19 Quarantine in March 2020. I worked with an exceptional group of 8th graders who chose to do a gap year of academics to be prepared to enter into private schools in the New England area.
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My students always talked about music and we just came out of learning about the Jim Crow era and caricatures appearing in current day. It would be relevant to bring their love of music and watching music videos helping to understand how history is evolving, reforming, and present. It was a lesson that spun off in multiple follow up lessons that we were able to compare to numerous time periods through music and videos.
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It is extremely important to help create a working definition of culture and then encourage and express students' identities and life experiences throughout lessons.