A humble beginning

This marks the beginning of something I have wanted to do for a long time: pay it forward. From my first moments as a student to now as a young educator in my 14th year, my teachers and colleagues have inspired me and challenged me with every idea and strategy I use in my classroom. Now it is time for me to share some of these ideas with the world.

I have been absolutely blessed to have worked in 6 different schools in 4 different states in the U.S. over the past 13 years. It was in these incredible schools that I found the most incredible frontline workers in our country: educators.

These educator represented the most beautiful diversity of thought, practice, and personality. Each day I worked along side them, I was inspired by their common purpose: each teacher works tirelessly to engage their students with both a spirit of love as well as a sense of hope that they will grow in some positive way as a human, student, and/or world citizen.

From these 6 groups of teacher leaders, I draw my own pedagogy and philosophy of teaching. From them, I find courage during the hard times to continue teaching. And from them, I draw my love and passion for this incredibly difficult yet rewarding job.

An Unconventional Teacher aspires be a place for inspiration, community and collaboration. In these times of incredible challenge with COVID19 sweeping our nation like a storm, our network of teachers must unite together and lean on each other to not only survive this situation but rather come out ideally in a better place.

As I tell my students after each class and I will end each Podcast episode and Blog post with: "Vive como si fuera tu último día." or in English: "Live like it were your last day." (more on that quote in a later post and podcast episode).