I was lucky enough to come to the teaching profession in a very personal way.  The most influential person in my life was not only a teacher, but a teacher of teachers.  My grandmother, Helen Perry, taught Elementary Education at the Universityof Georgia and later, after I was born, at Old Dominion University.  I literally grew up in the back of her classrooms, and I am proud to say
that her students were the ones who taught me to read and love learning both before I entered school formerly and later as teachers in my elementary classrooms.

The effects of this early influence and association were profound.  I lived the immediacy of the effect teachers have on the lives of their students. They were dedicated to not only my success, but my happiness and well being as well.  They read to me and taught me to read to them when I would walk to the old Education building from Larchmont Elementary School in the afternoons.
I came to believe that teaching was not only a deeply personal experience but a life affirming one as well.  I still do.

Those early years taught me to love our profession for the extraordinary opportunities that teachers provide every year.
Today, my fellow teachers and I have the opportunity to do the same and not only teach the things we love but help our students live and learn in their own unique experiences.  We often provide them with incredible opportunities that they may never have the chance to take advantage of or even consider.    This is the very essence of our profession what makes it more than a job or even a career.
As one of my colleagues once observed, teaching is a calling.

I have tried to combine this personal belief of education with specific educational theories that I find particularly compelling.  My own educational practices have been deeply affected by the psychologist and educator Jerome Bruner, who profoundly changed the way in which my teaching strategies in the classroom, especially the writing classroom, are applied.

His writings on the effects of discovery, process, and intuition on the development of cognitive learning, particularly in his work On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand, color the way in which I teach writing and literature.  I see its continued value in not only the development of my students’ writing, but also in the development of their higher critical thinking skills in the analysis of what they read.  By teaching my students to break down and examine the ideas that comprise not only what they write and read but why they have those ideas in the first place, they have a greater appreciation of the need for clear communication and the skill which it takes to craft writing and works of literature.  I have also learned that Bruner’s moment of discovery is very real in our students and the classroom, and that their appreciation of this ah ha moment is deep and sincere. The light bulb going off is, as all teachers know, one of those littlevictories we live for.  All children strive for competence because, as Bruner describes, it is the key to their ability to deal with life.

One practice that I use in the writing classroom is that of cubing.  Cubing asks students to start at a basic point, providing an example of the idea on which they wish to write, and a then move it through more challenging developmental stages using description, explanation, analysis, comparisons, and contrasts.  This is a process approach that leads to both general and specific discovery through writing. Students discover the general nature of an idea by dividing it into its particular parts.  The process has resulted in more developed and thoughtful writing from my students.

I have shared my interpretation of the writing cube and the results of my students’ achievements using the process with colleagues at the conference on Collaborative Learning as well as with myown colleagues in connection to its value as a writing across the curriculum strategy.

I continue discovering and using more ways to differentiate my classroom.  I continue to strive to find and use as many strategies to teach both reading and writing in any curriculum I am assigned to teach.  I use modeling extensively and am a firm believer in its power in the writing and reading classrooms. I also work to provide as many opportunities as possible like walking galleries, group readings, mini-debates, unit assessment choices, art projects, and portfolio development to give students ways to use multiple intelligence strategies .  All of these choices offer a variety of rewards in and out of the language
classroom.

The greatest gift I bring to my classes is the message that anyone can learn something new and useful every day.  This is the heart of my philosophy of teaching- Life-long learning is as precious as the breath of life itself.

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