Dedicated elementary educator with a proven track record of commended performance teaching to lower elementary in a Montessori-based, mixed-grade classroom. Innovative education leader and collaborator with a passion for education and an unwavering commitment to optimizing student and school success.
About Me
I BELIEVE THAT THROUGH EDUCATION, WE CAN CREATE A BETTER WORLD
I believe that through education, we can create a better world.
My mission is to encourage my students to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners, committed to enduring fundamental principles with a drive for innovation and improvement.
I can achieve my mission by empowering my students to become self-regulated learners who know how to ask good questions, set effective goals, pursue their aspirations and have the determination to achieve them. These skills also help to support students’ sense of agency, encouraging them to see their learning as an active and dynamic process.
I believe educational outcomes are profoundly shaped by the teacher-student relationship, and that I believe that my success as a teacher depends on that connection and building a foundation of trust with each of my students. By tapping into individual interests, talents and passions, students blossom both individually and as a community.
• STUDENT DRIVEN
A strong emphasis is placed on students finding their own information and constructing their own understandings.
• FOCUSED ON CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING
Concepts are explored in order to both deepen disciplinary understanding and to help students make connections and transfer learning to new contexts.
• DEVELOPED IN LOCAL AND GLOBAL CONTEXTS
Teaching uses real-life contexts and examples, and students are encouraged to process new information by connecting it to their own experiences and to the world around them.
• FOCUSED ON TEAMWORK AND COLLABORATION
This includes promoting teamwork and collaboration between students, but also refers to the collaborative relationship between teachers and students.
• INCLUSIVE, DIFFERENTIATED, PERSONALIZED
Teaching is inclusive and values diversity. It affirms students’ identities, and aims to create learning opportunities that enable every student to develop and pursue appropriate personal goals.
• DATA-DRIVEN
Assessment plays a crucial role in supporting, as well as measuring, learning. This approach also recognizes the crucial role of providing students with effective feedback.
• TECHNOLOGY-INTEGRATED
Learning in a rapidly changing landscape requires high levels of information fluency, media literacy, and technology integration, all of which should be structured around computational thinking and digital citizenship, beginning in lower elementary.
• INTERNATIONAL-MINDED
A way of thinking, being, and acting that is characterized by an openness to the world and and a recognition of our interconnectedness, common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet. I believe intercultural understanding and respect is an essential part of life in the 21st century.
MY APPROACH TO TEACHING
WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE
What Happy Students&Parents Say
"Jessica’s highest priority from the beginning, has been to provide her students with stability and high expectations. Her students have thrived under her direction. Their progress has been substantial, demonstrated by improved assessment scores. Beyond academics, they have also experienced significant improvement in their behaviors thanks to Jessica’s patience and wonderful classroom structures.
Jessica is a problem solver. She is not afraid to think outside the box when looking for solutions to problems. When it comes to her students, the sky's the limit. She sees the potential of each student and gently pushes them to reach it. Her ambitious projects in the first, second, and third grade mixed-age classroom have sparked her students’ imaginations and showed her peers what is really possible when kids are given challenges. Her students have built everything from catapults to computers. They’ve thoroughly explored exotic locations. They’ve successfully held an impressive science fair that would rival any Middle school. They’ve been introduced to coding and digital citizenship in a way that will give them an edge over their peers."
-Amber Mortensen, Teacher, Montessori Grades 1-3 [Colleague]