The above quote, originally from Bill Gates, has been a guiding light of my career path. My dad was a Technical Education teacher at a vocational school. I remember spending hours crawling under his shop tables looking for little electronic fragments in the furthest reaches of his gray, dusty classroom. As soon as I found a new treasure I didn’t recognize, I would run to Dad and ask what it was. He would always offer the same big worded responses that were over my head, but left me dreaming of the day when I would understand and be able to use my little floor treasures to create electronic devices that everyone would use in their daily lives.

    I taught middle school math for 5 years. I engaged 21st century learners using personally created Internet videos, social media tools, and an interactive whiteboard with accompanying software where students create and use their own products. I used laptops weekly to discover math with teacher-created hypermedia such as PowerPoint games and WebQuests, online problem solving games, and math software. I used student response systems for a quick and accurate gauge of student understanding.  I was constantly finding ways to integrate technology into my lessons so that students could have the experiences it takes to be a digital citizen. When I was not planning my own lessons, I was helping colleagues test students using online software, showing them screen casting and interactive whiteboard tricks that make technology use more widely accessible to students, researching new software for use with other subject areas, and fixing minor hardware and software issues.

    In 2014, I became the (TRT) Technology Resource Teacher at Frederick Douglass Elementary School. As an innovative thinker, I have helped educators use technology to mold our future in a positive way. As a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert and a Common Sense Media Certified Educator, I have been able to successfully plan and implement many instructional coaching opportunities in a variety of elementary classroom settings. It is with this teacher leadership experience and my middle school background that I long to start my journey as a Middle School TRT with Loudoun County Public Schools.