PS 51 The Elias Howe School

I have worked at P.S. 51 for seven years, five years as a kindergarten teacher and two years as a literacy coach and intervention teacher. I was born in Ohio and received my A.B degree in Modern European Intellectual History from the University of Chicago. My children, Joshua and Daniele, were the reason I went into teaching. I volunteered a lot in their classrooms and eventually went to Hunter College where I received my M.S. in Education. After receiving my education degree, I worked as a teacher in P.S. 151 in early childhood grades. Before coming to P.S. 51, I worked as a Distinguished Teacher at P.S. 111 for two years.

I was honored to be presented with the Time Warner Cable National Teacher Award in 2007. My winning project was “Bread Brings Us Together”  From the study of bread, my kindergarten class studied a variety of family cultures, increased their comprehension and language skills, participated in science procedures and learned to work together and independently.  By visiting a bakery, reading books about bread and watching cable programming, the students discovered that people all over the world eat bread and that are just as many similarities as there are differences in various bread types.  They also learned that science is all around us - even in something we see and eat every day.