Hello to all of you! I am late posting my entry b/c I am technologically challenged and our school email has not been cooperative lately so I am trying to play catchup on the last few days assignments. I am a teacher in Catawba County, at Lyle Creek Elementary (Go Crocodiles!). I have taught several different grades in my 16 years of being in education, those being 4th, 2nd, K, and 1st. The last 11 have mostly been in kindergarten, with a few in 1st or a K/1st combo. Next year I'll be moving to 1st again, so I am excited about that. I tend to get bored doing the same things year after year so change is good for me in that way. I love teaching little kids because there is sooooo much they don't know, and I get to be the first person to introduce them to so many interesting things. Plus, they think you are brilliant at that age and they are not old enough yet to think they know more than you do.
I am married to a wonderful man named Darren, my husband of 12 years. We have 2 beautiful girls, Alexa who is 11 and Regan who will be 8 next month. They are the center of my world and keep me busy 24/7. As a family, we stay very very busy, especially since I begin this program last fall. Lately, our family activity of choice (if we have any spare time) is just to hang out by the pool and rest. We love to travel, and try to go on a trip somewhere new with the girls once a year. We also love to garden, so my summers are usually spent canning and putting veggies and fruit in the freezers for the winter. It's a lot of work, but I love doing it and I like knowing what my family is putting into their mouths. My specialties are homemade salsa and peach jam. I imagine that I won't have much spare time for that hobby this summer, because in addition to this online class I am also doing my practicum.
I began working on my masters last fall, so I am only 2 semesters in. I have always wanted to get my degree, but many things have happened that have caused me to put off starting it. I have to admit, I have been very overwhelmed at times, and questioned why I ever embarked on such a journey, but I have learned so much already and I am excited about all the new things I have yet to learn about. Reading for me was always a breeze; I struggled at times with math, but reading and language arts always just came natural to me and I learned to read at a very early age, mostly on my own. I can remember my father (who passed away just this past March) reading to me every night as a young child, so I guess I just memorized words and learned to read that way. I learned about phonics and vowel patterns later on, but I was reading by myself when I walked into kindergarten the first day. It was interesting to me when I began teaching in a 4th grade classroom and there were children in there who could not read. Of course, you don't know anything when you get that first class, but I learned all about the diversities of abilities quite quickly. I also learned that for most children, learning to read does not come easily as it did for me, and that for some it is a painful and embarassing experience. Teaching reading has always been my favorite part of my job, and when I moved down to the early primary grades and began to work with children who were just learning to read, I knew I had found my niche. This is truly what I love to do. I am fascinated by differences in kids, and how they learn at different rates and by different methods. I love to watch them finally start to get how the language works and begin to be able to actually decode words on their own. I work at a Title One school, and we have a huge population of minority children at our school. Many of our kids are ESL, and many of those come to me as a kindergarten teacher knowing not a word of English. This presents new struggles for me in teaching as it is hard to teach a child that you cannot communicate with. I am interested in addressing that topic in our posts.
I hope to gain from this program new strategies to help those struggling learners for whom reading is an unpleasant thing; I want to be able to reach those kids that would otherwise slip through the cracks and get lost in the shuffle. I want to be the one who will make the difference in somebody's life.
Lorie Hedrick