About Me

I was born in Listowel, Ontario, and raised on a small chicken farm, where I was homeschooled by my mother until the age of eight. Her personal dedication to my learning is a value I have sought to impart on my own students, taking the time to read aloud and connect content with hands-on experiences. In grade three, my parents moved to Durham, Ontario where I first attended public school. It was during this year, I determined that I would one day become an elementary teacher. I can still recall to this very day the name of the teacher who inspired my dream, Mr, Klein, whom I remembered because he celebrated a narrative I had written and had it “published” for the classroom library.

Over the few years, I traveled to different schools in the province and out, as my parents had accepted work positions that took our family across the world. In grade five, I attended a missionary school in Hoskins, Papua New Guinea, in which I became a member of a learning community that comprised of many different nationalities, languages, and experiences. This learning adventure continued as we moved to a tribal location and I was educated through the use of video classroom content, using self assessment tools and the support of my mother to successfully complete the junior grades. The experience of living in a third world country is an asset I bring to my classroom, having learned from a diverse culture and language, I hope to serve my students of different ethnic and social backgrounds.

In my first year of high school, I attended a missionary boarding school comprised of 100 students, yet was transitioned midway through the year, where I began attending a county high school in Camdenton, Missouri which comprised of 1,500 students. With this personal experience, I can attest to the mixed emotions and struggles associated with transitions in student’s learning. In grade ten, my family relocated to Port Elgin, Ontario where I continued for two years, adjusting to a new school, an unfamiliar curriculum, group of peers and teachers. In 1999, my family moved to Cambridge, Ontario where I successfully completed my remaining years in high school. Over the course of these years, I had built on my abilities to transition smoothly, and quickly adapted by becoming involved in the school council, event committees, athletics, and ran for school president in the first year of my attendance.

Excited to begin the next steps of my education, I accepted an invitation from the University of Waterloo. However, transitions in my personal life and finances led me to seek full time employment, in an endeavour to better prepare for the long road ahead. I returned to post secondary education in 2004, where I continued to pursue my undergraduate degree at Wilfrid Laurier University. In 2009, I successfully graduated with a degree in Contemporary Studies and a Children’s Education and Psychology focus. I decided to take a year to develop my teaching experiences, and sought employment at the YMCA as a Before and After School Age Program Coordinator, in addition to tutoring students with Autism, and then later accepted a position with Mad Science as an science educator in schools. Over the course of the year, I volunteered at a public school in Burlington, providing literacy coaching and special education support. I also worked at the school, providing daily supervision assistance and staff relief.

In 2010, I was accepted into the Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty of Education, where I learned pedagogy, effective instruction and management techniques, and had opportunities to apply my knowledge in course assignments and unit planning. Over the course of this year, I have had the pleasure of working alongside expert teachers, collaborating in an effort to provide quality instruction in consideration of the WRDSB high yield techniques. I have observed effective teaching and its influence on student engagement and learning achievement. As I venture out beyond the experience of student teaching, I will endeavour to continue to develop my knowledge and understanding of this field of which I am so passionate about! I know that I will become the teacher who my students will look up to, of whom they can trust, and who they know will always go “above and beyond” to ensure their success.

I was hired on to the Occasional Teacher List in Halton District School Board in November 2011, and recently became the newest member of a 1/2 FI and 2-1 FI class at Charles R. Beaudoin P.S. in Burlington, Ontario.

...and so, my learning journey continues!