I am a semi-retired outdoor educator. The bulk of my career was with Houston ISD at the Outdoor Education Center at Camp Olympia (OEC.) The OEC was a 4-day, 3-night, residential, outdoor education field campus for Houston ISD. Unfortunately, due to budget cuts the program closed in 2018. I started working for this school in the woods right out of college. It did not take long for me to discover that I had a passion for teaching the 5th graders who came to learn hands-on, experiential lessons in an outdoor setting. The predominant curricular focus of the program was standards based based science, however, to meet student needs we integrated all content areas into the curriculum.
I earned my self-contained 1-8 certification and Masters in Education from Stephen F. Austin State University. The faculty at SFA challenged me to find new and creative ways to apply multidisciplinary content into our outdoor curriculum at the OEC. I even developed a curriculum that integrated music and the works of master artists into science based lessons. I love the challenge of seeking creative ways to inspire students and creating strong standards based lessons to support their learning.
In 1998 I was promoted to a leadership position at the OEC. This position was a dream job for me as it was about 50 percent teaching and about 50 percent leading a group of five other instructors. I loved the combination of staying in contact with students and having leadership duties as well. I trained supervised and evaluated members of my teaching team. I planned and facilitated weekly meetings which included curriculum development, teaching pedagogy, and content review.
From 2015-2018, l was the manager/principal of the program. I led the program with safety and quality instruction as our primary goals. During this time, I applied best practices in instruction I learned at a leadership institute I attended with Berkeley University’s Lawrence Hall of Science. The constructivist, experience based, inquiry concepts advocated by this research based program aligned perfectly with my personal education philosophies. Under my direction, the OEC leadership team rewrote our entire curriculum to be aligned with the 5-E model of learning. I also identified racial disparity in our scheduling systems and corrected the process to ensure our demographics matched the overall community. My proudest accomplishment as leader of the program was an outreach were invited refugee students to the outdoor campus. This was beyond our regular budgeted programming so I secured funding from outside donors to see this special program to fruition.
After the OEC program was cut I took a position teaching 5th grade science and social studies with Willis ISD. It was very fun to get back to the basics of teaching in what turned out to be my last year before retirement. I am now a stay at home parent to my own elementary age children, but I continue to make myself available to local schools and programs for advice and unique programming.
I have the skills not only to teach any content area, but also the experience to train and develop aspiring teachers. My wealth of experience and passion for education would be an asset to any program. I have never stopped being a student of best practices and curriculum. I believe that the best teachers never stop learning themselves. I am ready to support and advise your program with my experience and skills.