Major: Minor: Women's Studies
Hometown: Monroe, NY
Further Degrees: MSEd: Teaching Urban Children with Disabilities from LIU Brooklyn
Current Employment: Special Education Teacher with the NYC DOE. As of next fall, I will be teaching in a Nest program, which is an up-and-coming program designed to facilitate the inclusion of children with autism and Asperger's into general education classrooms.
An important HC memory: It was my dream to study abroad, but I was extremely financially limited. Because they take the time to get to know the students personally and consider their goals of their students alongside of their specific situations, the staff at the Honor's College recommended the PASSHE Summer Honors Program to me. With guidance, I applied and was accepted to participate in summer courses at Clarion University, which culminated with a two-week, all-expenses-paid trip to Paris. This experience not only enriched my learning and contributed to my study of the French language, but it also taught me not to passively accept that something you want is just beyond your reach, financially or otherwise. I learned to actively seek opportunities to attain my goals.
About my major: The Sociology Department at IUP has outstanding teachers. In fact, when I started teaching and studying education, I remember thinking about how I amazing it was to me that my Sociology professors not only became experts in their fields, but also took the time and energy to devise classes, readings, and activities that would engage the class and provide the information we needed to learn in a manner that was engaging and relevant to us. As a Sociology major, I learned theory and clinical social work techniques and participated in a twelve-week summer internship at NOW-NYC, which helped me synthesize what I learn and read about sociology with real-life practice in that field.
The Core curriculum: My most important educational experiences happened in Core. I learned skills to analyze what I read and hear, which transformed learning from simply acquiring information to processing information and developing my own ideas based off of what I learn. These skills are not only important in academia; I use them whenever I try to make an educated choice about anything, be it a career move or a decision on how I will vote.