Tuesday, September 8, 2015

About Me

Hi, all!
My name is Lanaia Walker, and I am going to Grand Valley State University for Elementary Education and teaching Elementary Spanish! Super specifically, I am a Core Sciences and Arts for Teaching (CSAT) major, and a Teaching Elementary Spanish Minor.

Directly related to my degrees is my first fun fact: I am the very first person to be going through my program in the College of Education. This makes me a sort of guinea pig for the COE; while they figure out the best way to send us elementary Spanish teachers through. This semester I am in a Spanish transition bilingual kindergarten classroom at Cesar Chávez Elementary School, and so far it is awesome! I get to teach the children everything you would normally teach kindergartners, but for the Spanish language instead of English.

Some things that I absolutely love, besides Spanish and children, are reading, spending time outside being active, hanging out with my husband, watching NCIS (season 13 starts September 22nd!), and getting to see my family. I have seven people in my family, and soon there will be nine of us, as we are in the process of adopting two toddlers who have been in foster care in our home for almost two years.

As far as planning and using technology in the classroom, throughout my time at Grand Valley I have spent a lot of time planning and using PowerPoint presentations while teaching lessons. They are very helpful for keeping lessons on track and interesting. I have also used a couple different blogs, including Weebly, in many classes to organize information and incite discussion among classmates. While tutoring in English 308, I relied heavily on a couple different book websites, including the Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database (CLCD), to help me evaluate book levels and quality for my tutees. Finally, in our elementary health class, we were required to find websites and online videos to help plan lessons for each unit of health. In many of these lessons, Pinterest was an extremely useful resource.


Kayaking with my husband, Kevin, in Wisconsin.

The schools I have spent the most time are Robinson Elementary, which is a part of Grand Haven Area Public Schools, and Sibley and Cesar Chávez Elementary, which are both part of Grand Rapids Public Schools.

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