Janet

Certified Tutor

What is fair is not always equal. Every child has a right to an individualized high quality education. My job is to facilitate the learning process to ensure that my students have access to to this education. We all learn differently, so I must be able to teach differently. Ahead, behind or on their own path my goal is for my students to reach their goals.

I have served as a Special Education Teacher for 12 years in Chicago, Houston and rural Arkansas. Professional development early in my career focused on teaching reading phonics, fluency and comprehension to students with dyslexia and/or learning disabilities. Houston ISD awarded me the ASPIRE award two consecutive years for my students' outstanding growth in reading on the national Stanford assessment. Using Phonographix, multi-sensory grammar, and the Voyager curriculum my students improved 2.2 years growth in reading in each of those years. My personal interest in science influenced the following years of my career, where I co-taught high school Physics, Chemistry and Biology. I found I was able to regularly reinforce reading strategies even while teaching these subjects. NASA sponsored my participation in research projects at Loyola University on the Kepler Mission and at DePaul University creating research based science curriculum using weather balloons and micro-tech. Later, I developed a 9th grade STEM curriculum using Citizen-Science projects to teach ACT Science objectives.

I have a Masters of Science in Science Education from DePaul University, a Masters of Education in Special Education from Grand Canyon University and a Bachelors of Science in Psychology from Sam Houston State University.

My current project is building a tiny house and raising food on my acre in western Montana.