BIOGRAPHY
My relentless belief in the potential of all students emanated from teaching at the elementary, middle school, and high school levels with regular education, special education, English Language Learners, and in music education. After graduating Magna cum Laude from Bowling Green State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in K-8 Elementary Education, I became a science educator in the Durham Public Schools during the unification of the Durham City and Durham County systems. This first exposure to racial integration sparked my commitment to rigorous and culturally-informed instruction as a force for empowerment and equity. The next chapter of my career provided intensely valuable experiences that deepened my understanding of several school stakeholder roles including school parent, PTA volunteer, substitute teacher, Teacher Assistant/Instructional Assistant, and writer of standardized assessment questions. After gleaning wisdom and empathy from these roles I pursued additional certifications in Special Education, Middle School Language Arts, Middle School Math, and Middle School Social Studies. These enabled me to expand my instructional experience to middle and high school levels through Special Education positions such as Cross Categorical Resource, Autism Support, Behavior Support, Math and Language Arts Resource, and Occupational Course of Study. These positions afforded an internalizing of school processes through serving on the MTSS/Instructional Leadership Team, SIT team, SIT Special Topics Committee, School Safety Team, Progress Monitoring Implementation Committee, Student Mentoring Committee, and as a Literacy Lead and BT Mentor. In order to best serve the needs of my students I have also grown my pedagogy through specialized training in Literacy, Foundational Math, Equity, Social-Emotional learning, Instructional Technology, and Intervention. As a result, I have been asked to provide in-house and community professional development and mentoring on serving students with disabilities in the general education setting as well as for professional coaching with instructional practices and the National Boards of Professional Teaching Standards. A.B. Combs is the setting of my Principal Residency and I am honored to grow my school leadership skills by serving under Muriel Summers and with her outstanding staff. I can be contacted at [email protected] and look forward to making a powerful impact for the students of Wake County.
The NCSU Principal Preparation program afforded us opportunities at pivotal junctures to reflect on our growth and create visual products to represent it. The infographic the left was at the completion of our first year while the one-pager above represented our growth immediately before our full-time Principal Residency began. Maintaining a practice of reflection is vital to the continual growth of all leaders, and often a visual representation is most easily referenced. Throughout our principal residencies we continued to submit written reflections weekly, which our executive coaches and cohort directors reviewed and discussed with us. These layers of support provided extensive opportunities to develop the many facets of leadership to prepare us to be truly impactful school administrators. |