STEM Pioneer to STEM Educator
I love engineering. So why leave engineering for education?
It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot harder to make a difference.
Tom Brokaw
Long before STEM and STEAM were acronyms, few young girls were pursuing engineering as careers. Influential teachers in my life gave me the confidence to earn two degrees in engineering. Jerry Martin, my 6th grade math teacher at Ridgeview Junior High School first showed me that I had a talent and interest in mathematics. Thirty years later, he inspired me to use that experience to share my love of math and science with the next generation of future engineers.
In the 20 years since changing careers, I have been influential in the lives of countless children. I have an MEd in mathematics and science education with a reading endorsement and gifted education minor.
Before attending graduate school, I assisted in two classrooms where the teachers were using random spelling lists and grouping students by level. Children begged to move out of the lowest spelling group because of the stigma. I wish I had known about Orton Gillingham’s diagnostic, prescriptive, systematic approach back then. Not only would it have helped these students with spelling, but with their self-esteem as well.
After graduation I joined the staff at Marburn Academy, in Columbus, Ohio. Marburn Academy is a private school for students with dyslexia and dyscalculia. All teachers utilized the Orton-Gillingham methodology for individual tutoring and whole-class instruction. The Consortium of Literacy Educators (COLE), an Academy of Orton-Gillingham Practitioners and Educators (AOGPE) accredited trainer, provided my training and supervised practicum.
My Dyslexia Story
Let me share a bit about “John”, who arrived at Marburn Academy as a defiant sixth-grader. Expecting to play football in the public school, he was angry with his parents for sending him to a private school without sports (at that time). However, he knew that middle school was full of hard knocks and bullying for an intelligent, popular athlete unable to demonstrate his true intelligence and creativity.
John soon realized that we had literacy remediation tools that work, and the competition was on. Through our writing fluency program, he made astounding progress at getting his thoughts into writing. As his typing and writing abilities soared, he badgered me to print him new graphs to plot his progress. He left us in 8th grade to attend a top high school where he excelled in academics and football. Now a proud mechanical engineer, his creativity, inventiveness, and superior math/science skills helped him to design aircraft engines upon college graduation.
Not all students with dyslexia will be able to attend private school for intensive instruction and achieve this type of academic success. It is my goal is to share resources on dyslexia with teachers, students, and their families. Many adults, now realizing that they are dyslexic, will find the information useful as well. My students make me laugh and break my heart at times, but I am grateful daily for the opportunity to help make their lives a bit easier.
Many former students still keep in touch, and seeing where they are today inspires me to continue research into learning challenges and the pursuit of solutions.
My Roles in Education
I have been a classroom teacher, a private tutor and dyslexia advocate, and a university professor. I am now an instructional designer showing teachers how to Design for Dyslexia. These roles allow me to serve individual students and their families, but also to educate and provide resources for teachers worldwide.
I teach Physical Science in the STEM Integrated PreK-6 Classroom in the STEM Instructional Leader Program at Johns Hopkins University School of Education (JHU). This course allows me to combine my experience as an Engineer, a chemistry and physics classroom teacher, and as a special education teacher. JHU has an institutional focus on meeting the individual needs of ALL students, throughout their lives. STEM equity is a major focus in my course and we consider how students’ individual needs are influenced by learning challenges and gaps, cultural differences, educational inequities, and technology access and literacy, among other influences.
Getting educational research into the hands of front-line educators is an ongoing challenge. My goals are to empower educators to design inclusive instruction and help all learners understand and advocate for their own needs.