Welcome to my portfolio!

Above you'll see a chalkboard. At the bottom of that chalkboard is the menu for each of the standards and my resume. Click on a link to take you to that standard. The content within this site is viewable with your choice of web browsers and Acrobat Reader (click here to download and install a copy). Anytime you see this symbol (), you'll need Acrobat Reader to view that link. I'll also include PowerPoint presentations. Those will be marked with this symbol (). If you don't have Microsoft PowerPoint, you can download the viewer here. Last but not least, there will be a few videos and audio files you can watch and listen to. They are in Windows Media Video (WMV) format or Windows Media Audio (WMA) format. Those will be marked with this symbol (). Any video/audio player that handles those formats will do, but if you don't have one, check out Windows Media Player. One last note about using this site: Student Work Samples have their own page. That page and its contents will be referenced often.

To the right you'll see a picture of a portion of the classroom I've spent my time in during my student teaching. There are desks, posters on the wall, student work in trays at the back, books on the shelves. This was my educational home. It was a wonderful environment with a wonderful mentor teacher in charge.

My time spent at Mason County High School was very enlightening. I went from being unsure of my abilities to teach to suddenly finding that I could not only imbed the information into the students' brains, but also make it fun for them at the same time. Morehead State University has also taught me a lot about teaching. A combination of the classes I've taken and the student teaching I've done has increased my abilities ten-fold.

Following are some of the important lessons I feel I've learned:

Seriously. Knowing the students should be the first priority of a teacher. Find out their names including the ones they want to be called by. Call them by their names everyday as they walk in your classroom. Learn their hobbies and passions. Use what you know to reach them. You'll find more of my musings among the nine standards. The following quote emphasizes my feelings about getting to know your students.

"If you capture kids' hearts, you have their heads. If you don't capture their hearts, you have no business messing with their heads."