1. What is your educational background and where have you worked previously?
I went to Slippery Rock for my Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctorate Degrees. I graduated with my Bachelor’s in Music Therapy with a minor in Special Education in 2006. From there I worked as a TSS for Watson Institute. I was awarded a graduate assistantship in grad admissions while I worked towards my Master’s in Special Ed with another Elementary Ed degree added on. I graduated in 2009, and the week after, I was teaching homebound for a boy with cerebral palsy. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with him academically, so I did music with him. I took my guitar and would put maracas in his hands, which led to me putting markers in his hands and he would draw and write, which was very cool to me. I taught him throughout the summer and then West Mifflin hired me to start a new Autistic Support classroom in the fall. From there, I moved to Neil Armstrong Middle School in Bethel Park and was there for 10 years as a 5-6 learning support teacher where I did a lot of co-teaching. Then one day I came home from work and had a postcard from Slippery Rock about their new doctoral program and knew that was my next step! When I began the Doctoral program in January, I got the syllabi, logged on to D2L (which I had never used before) and got very overwhelmed. I ended up deferring for a year to think about it, and at the time I had a lot of student teachers from Slippery Rock in my classroom. One of the supervisors told me how being a professor is one of the greatest jobs and encouraged me to pursue my doctorate. When the next January rolled around, I started the doctoral program while I was still teaching full time. I had some people who doubted me and why I was getting my doctorate. Dr. Lynch said to us during class, “Once you get this, nobody can ever take it away from you,” and that really stuck with me. While I was still getting my doctorate, I had a practicum student from Robert Morris University, and her supervisor, the head of the Education department, asked me if I was interested in teaching as they had a transition class that they needed someone to teach. I tried it out to see if I liked teaching at the college level, and I loved it! I went on to teach full time at St. Vincent College from 2019-2021. Needless to say, I was beyond thrilled when I got hired to come back to SRU and work alongside many of the professors that I had had!
2. What attracted you to Slippery Rock University, and in particular, the College of Education?
From the moment I drove on the main street, I told my mom this was the school for me. Every person on the initial campus tour was so friendly and welcoming that it just felt like home! I went for my undergraduate degree in Music Therapy, and I had gotten into other schools that felt very competitive which is just not me. When I came back to SRU for the third time around for my Doctorate, I had someone tell me that I was going to have to leave Slippery Rock eventually. They couldn’t have been more wrong! I love how everyone here is so welcoming and so friendly. Everyone wants to help each other and to encourage others’ success. It’s not a competitive environment - everybody shares resources and is so supportive!
3. What is your favorite course to teach?
Overview of Special Education (SPED 121) is my favorite because it’s one of the classes I taught at St. Vincent, so I’ve been teaching it the longest and feel comfortable making changes and being more creative with that class. Since it’s an overview, there’s so much that you get to pack into a semester! It’s also fun because it’s freshman or people new to special education, so you get to see what their preconceptions are and then show them what it will actually look like in the classroom. We also go over all of the different diagnoses and how you qualify for services, and I get to make it very hands-on and do lots of activities with the students.
4. What is your favorite aspect of working in Special Education?
Seeing growth and finding student strengths! For example, I had a student with pretty severe ADHD. He was pretty disorganized and a lot of teachers got very frustrated with him, but he was one of my favorite students. Academics just weren’t his thing, and that’s okay! He had a very difficult time being organized, his papers would be all over, he’d have stuff across the hallway and never know where anything was. He loved recording videos though. So during the PSSAs, when there was a lot of down time, I had him make a video about the school for the fourth graders that would be coming to the school the next year. He organized an entire schedule for production for when he would film, and I had never seen him be so organized and independent. I think finding what kids’ strengths are, like his love for filming, and seeing them be successful, no matter what success looks like for that student, is so rewarding.
5. What were you like as a college student?
I was very organized and good at finding balance between having fun and getting my work done and getting good grades. I was very lucky that I worked in a computer lab in which I had a lot of downtime to get my school work done. So while I was very studious and organized, I was able to balance that with my free time. My junior and senior year, I really struggled personally with issues back home, and I had to go home a lot on the weekends for my family, but I had the most supportive people around me. All of my professors and my boss were all so understanding and so many of them encouraged me to keep going when it got difficult. So I’m thankful for the people I had around me supporting me when I was in college!
6. What do you know now that you wish you would have known as a college student?
That it goes so fast! When I was a student, every semester felt like it would go on forever, but when it’s all done, you look back and feel like the time flew by. So make the most out of the time you have and try everything! Take advantage of all that campus has to offer, without stressing yourself out of course. There are so many things that you don't think about even as an adult, like having the ARC for free, and the beautiful Macoskey Center with so many cool programs that you can go to to destress or learn new things. I never did any of that, I think because I was scared and didn’t want to do anything outside of my circle of friends. Now I see that if I had tried new things, the worst that could have happened was I didn’t like it and wouldn’t have to return. So my biggest piece of advice is to try everything you can and take advantage of everything.
