Introduction and Welcome!

Hello!  Welcome to my corner of the internet and thanks for stopping in!  If it was real life, I’d offer you coffee or drinks and provide you with snacks.  

I’m Sarah, living life in a bit of a blur but always striving for more clarity.  I’m “mom, Mom, MOM,” to five awesome kids who are blessings and keep my husband and I constantly on the move. Our oldest is a senior in high school and currently applying to college, while our youngest is in fourth grade. I span the k-12 school system as both a parent and an educator.  This year our kids are involved in football, tennis, baseball, soccer, and horse-back riding lessons plus all other kinds of school activities. The kids are in an International Baccalaureate Chinese Immersions program (Post Oak )which is a rather unique experience.

I love to read, garden, and travel but due to the time constraints of life, I don’t really spend any time on my own hobbies at this point. I was raised on a dairy farm in a tiny town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  I love the outdoors and anything animal related.  

“In the Blur” speaks to the hazy lines of fast-paced, everyday life but also to the fact that my personal and professional lives are quite blurred.  I received my undergraduate degree in elementary education from MSU with minors (and additional teaching endorsements) in biology and agricultural education.  After completing my teaching internship in a Lansing kindergarten class, we had our oldest daughter and I was a stay at home mom for ten years.  I currently work for MSU’s Chinese Language Teacher Certification Program (CLTCP).  I help recruit, train, teach, and support the students in our program who are working towards teacher certification and MA degrees.  It’s wonderfully rewarding but as our program is undergoing massive restructuring, it’s challenging at times. The blurry part is that my children are in one of our partner districts so I am involved in the program in a very intertwined fashion.  I’m involved as a parent, a teacher, and as a program administrator.  

I believe on the surface, curriculum can be a very specific set of standards, goals, or information for a specific class or area of study. However, I also believe that curriculum is ultimately the life we live and the knowledge we accumulate across the span of our lives.  A math class has a more discrete curriculum and our lives a very broad curriculum.  I believe that the best curriculums have an experiential component and consider student engagement, motivation, and life experiences beyond just holding to a proscribed, static set of standards.  I believe (and try to live the practice) that the best teachers are reflective, both regarding their teaching practices but also on their students’ experiences.  I’m currently working with adult international students (which is outside my original training) and this requires much contemplation and learning on my part.  I am very passionate about my work so am always learning by doing and hopefully growing continually as an educator.  

Since I'll be discussing curriculum, here's obligatory back to school pictures! 


Comments

  1. Kyle GreenwaltJanuary 15, 2020 at 11:33 AM

    Hi Sarah,

    Thanks for all of the awesomeness in this opening post. Love seeing your family and hearing about your background. I suppose it's kind of sad that it takes a class to introduce ourselves to each other in this deeper way. But I'm grateful for the opportunity. (I'll take you up on the drink and snacks at some point.)

    The notion of blur is a good one. It captures what I think life should be about--ever increasing interrelatedness between personal and professional; past, present, and future; global and local. One author that I like in education says she knew she had reached a good point in her life when she couldn't decide if the reading she was doing was for pleasure or for work. I'm inclined to agree.

    Maybe you know this, but the roots of curriculum (as we will see in cycle one) have their origins in a race track, which people reinterpret as a journey. Curriculum is literally our life's journey, our curriculum vitae. What we do in schools--ideally--is figure out how to pass the collective wisdom gained in lives richly lived onto the next generation. Not as received knowledge and custom, but as suggestions for how to move forward, through the good and the bad.

    Like I said, I'm honored and a little freaked out to have a colleague in one of my classes. But I'm looking forward to the chance to work together in this way during the semester.

    Take care,

    Kyle

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