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All About Me

Welcome to the fourth grade! I am so glad that you are part of my class this year.

I have known that I wanted to be a teacher since I was seven years old. I went to college upstate and finished in about three years. After that I started teaching in a fifth grade class. I received my Master’s degree in Literacy from C.W. Post. In addition, I have completed 60 post-graduate credits. I have been teaching here in Smithtown since 2003  and I love it here. I taught second grade for seven years and now I am moving on to the fourth grade.  I couldn't be more excited about all the new things I will be learning. I also teach professional development classes on poetry, critical thinking and literacy to other teachers. A few years ago I became an adjunct professor at Adelphi University.  This has been one of the most fun and rewarding teaching experiences I have had so far! 

A few years ago, I received the Western Suffolk BOCES Model Schools Teacher Integration Award.  Our class was acknowledged for the excellent work they had done using technology in our classroom. This was such an honor and I am excited to continue of the path of technology integration in the future. We have also been honored three years in a row by the Suffolk County Reading Council for our outstanding poetry writing!

In my spare time, I love to write poetry, to read and to learn new things. I love to travel and I plan on visiting many new places over the next few years. Once a week, I go to salsa class and practice learning various latin dances. I also take a class on another latin dance called Rueda.  I think I might like this type of dancing even more than salsa! It is so much fun. It is a dance with many people that have to work together as a group. It's all about the greater good! I also enjoy working on this website and researching various topics that pertain to our classroom environment and promoting students' learning. The poem that appears below explains one of my educational philosophies.

The Gift in the Struggle

One day a man saw a butterfly
shuddering on the sidewalk,
locked in a seemingly hopeless struggle to free itself
From its now… useless chrysalis.

Feeling pity, he took a pocketknife,
carefully cut away the chrysalis and set the butterfly free.
To his dismay, it lay on the sidewalk, convulsed weakly for a while and died.

A biologist later told him, “That was the worst thing you could have done!
A butterfly needs that struggle to develop the muscles to fly.
By robbing him of the struggle, you made him too weak to live.”

-Anonymous

We are going to do a lot of amazing things this year in fourth grade.  I have many great things in store for us, so be ready to work hard and to have some fun!

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