My desire to help others achieve success started at a young age as I earned my FIFA Soccer Referee card at the age of 15. I planned, upon graduating from Kenyon College with a degree in Political Science, that I would end up on the radio with my own talk show. My pursuit of this goal was successful on a small scale, and then, the teaching bug motivated me to get into the classroom and work with students. I started as an upper elementary teacher for the first 12 years of my time in the classroom. Then, I began working with older students in middle school and high school as well. At the same time, I was the head coach of a year round, competitive swim team and I worked with swimmers of all ages and abilities.
I believe that every student can experience and achieve success, measured specifically for each individual. The acquisition of knowledge, facts and information allows each student to then apply this knowledge to necessary skills needed to reach to their full potential. In order to give students the greatest chance at success, rote memorization, showing work in math, vocabulary, proper grammar and learning how to make a variety of connections are vital, though sometimes challenging to learn. But, I think that overcoming these challenges are what makes learning, or participating in sports, music groups, dance, etc. fun and authentically rewarding.