Teaching Philosophy 

“ I cannot teach anybody anything; I can only make them think.”- Socrates

As an educator, I value relationships with students above all else. Through building relationships with students, you can understand them as fully formed persons, not persons in training. When you understand what type of person your students are, you begin to see them as separate individuals with various needs and abilities. Once you understand a student's needs and abilities, you can help them understand their own metacognition, a valuable tool that will carry over to the rest of their education. A classroom built on understanding students' individual needs and abilities fosters an environment poised to create critical thinkers set on becoming lifelong learners. Lifelong learners understand that learning is not for preparing them for life but that throughout life, they are always learning.

In my classrooms, I will carry the notion that teachers learn just as much from their students as their students do from them. This sets the tone that we are constantly progressing and that self-discovery and growth never cease to be a part of our lives. If my students understand this, they will take pride in their mistakes and know that making mistakes is the only way to learn. My classroom of lifelong learners will value intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic motivation.

Personal Achievements

• Deans list 2021-2023 with a GPA of 3.6 or higher in the consecutive fall and winter semesters.
• Professional Development completed during my semester of student teaching. During this, I learned the importance of growing students' number sense through the use of number talks rather than emphasizing the memorization of math facts. This professional development reiterated that growing a student's number sense can help mend any broken relationships with math from previous perceived failures or shortcomings.