About me as an Educator

Why did I pursue Teaching after being in Industry?

Working in industry, I grew tired of working alone in sunless labs and serving faceless stakeholders. I pursued this transition to teaching because I've always loved Science and Engineering, but I also love serving others. I've grown to love my community, and realized I could serve it best by educating. As I worked as a substitute teacher, I continued to reaffirm this commitment everyday that I found joy and satisfaction working with our youth.

I had originally considered teaching when I was graduating high school because of the impact of many teachers, most importantly Ms. Durden (Biology), Mrs. Byrd (Chemistry), and Coach Seward (Engineering). Back then, I imagined myself pursuing being a history teacher. However, I had opted to pursue Biochemical Engineering as a major partially for monetary reasons but also because of the influence of those key teachers that made-up the components of that major.

Recently, I attended a family gathering where I discussed my switch. It turns out, I come from a family of teachers and life-long learners who all value education very much, and this generational value has been passed onto me.

Lessons from Substitute Teaching

As I worked as a substitute, I formed relationships with teachers, administrators, and students as I frequented a select subset of schools, growing my commitment to and understanding of CPS.

Schools where office admin called me back frequently:

Robert Healy ES
Whitney M. Young Magnet HS
Mark Sheridan ES

Teachers who mentored me

Many teachers have served as mentors to me across substitute assignments, giving me a multifaceted model of excellence in teaching.

They've best modeled:

Setting Proper Expectations: for myself and the students.
Balancing assertiveness and kindness.
Forming relationships with students.
Serving diverse learners.

My Teaching Observations:

Healy ES - 8th Grade Science
- I observed lessons with classes I've also substituted for. My purpose was for an "Environmental Assessment" and to look at "Learning Discrepencies" for students with IEPs, but I also enjoyed spending time with, and learning from, the teachers and students at Healy.
Whitney M. Young - (All Science)
- I observed lessons in Physics, Biology, and Chemistry across all levels (Honors, AP, Regular). The purpose of my observations was to see Science Literacy in practice, and I made a summary of these observations here

Places I've worked as a Guest teacher

My Pedagogical Underpinings

Some frameworks include:

Humanistic Pedagogy
Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
Transdisciplinary Science

This is not an exhaustive list!

I would say I do not have a complex philosophical digestion of these tenants. Instead, let this serve as my general view of education and what I hope to portray in a classroom as a teacher.

(WIP - more to be added to later)

A diagram I made displaying my "layered" view of approaching teaching: At my core, one must teach as a human first and foremost (Humanistic Pedagogy). At a practical level (middle), I find the UDL framework to be an excellent guiding force in designing lessons. At a broad level, I want science applied to all critical problem solving (Trans-disciplinary).

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