The opportunities I get from teaching in exerting a positive and constructive influence on the lives of children has given me a deep sense of personal fulfilment. My personal interest and my career ambitions lie in elementary teaching. After teaching for over 20 years, I have great satisfaction of knowing that I was able to help and influence children, both academically and personally. Over the course of my teaching career, I have developed strategies that I found to have a significant positive impact on students learning. One of my greatest concerns after I started teaching, was why students struggle to read and comprehend? After observing reading difficulties in many children, this pushed me to pursue a masters degree in reading where I was able to learn how reading and the brain works, and why some children struggle with reading and reading comprehension. This has helped me tremendously in understanding what causes reading difficulties and has allowed me to seek out strategies to assist my learners with reading difficulties.
I believe that as an educator, a great level of expertise is required, not just in terms of subject matter, but also with regards to understanding core principles such as how and why children learn. Having an interest in how and why children learn and what motivates children to learn or why some students are not motivated to learn, I pursued a PhD (in progress) in psychology to gain a better understanding of students and learning and how the mind works. As an educator, I learned how to make long- and short-term learning plans to meet each students needs, and how to differentiate instruction so that all children will succeed.