Dr. Junko Yamamoto

Dr. Yamamoto is such a personable individual and is very passionate about what she teaches and about helping the students be successful. She currently teaches instructional technology and world languages teaching methodology, and supervises fifteen student teachers. She loves being able to see student teachers using the information that they learned in her classes in an effective way. She explained how she is so proud that her student teachers are able to bridge theory and practice and actually apply into their teaching methods. 

She also shared that it’s important when the students use what she taught them as well as other professors and use all of the information, theories and practices all together. Yamamoto said that the “new project this year is taking some students enrolled in the instructional technology class to a local school district.” The students who sign up to go the district will get to see what kind of technology the teachers and students are using. The other project is a professional development grant that she is working on. Ten faculty members attended a four day workshop with her included. The objective is to have some of the people who teach Spanish and French become certified oral proficiency interview testers. The rationale of this is that Spanish and French Education majors must be able to speak at a certain level in order to be recommended for a teacher certificate. She explained that it is important that the teacher candidates in French or Spanish can formulate a paragraph in their target language. 

A student story that Yamamoto shared was when she saw a social studies education major student using their own knowledge of the Spanish language to tutor a non-native speaker because the student came from Central America. She explained that this student was able to use visuals and simplified English and sometimes cues in Spanish to be able to tutor him one on one. She said that her student “was able to help him understand.” 

In Dr. Yamamoto’s free time she likes to paint, crochet, knit, garden and sing. She enjoys listening to music and since it’s her job to teach the authentic cultures of Spanish and French she binge watches Spanish and French movies. One of the things that Yamamoto said that she appreciated about SRU is that “it is a teaching university and if you go to a non-teaching university you may have graduate student teaching undergraduate students. You don’t see anything like that here. You have someone who is qualified to teach the subject.” Another reason she appreciates SRU “is it’s a nice, safe community and once you got here you don’t have to worry about crime or violence as much as studying at some other universities.” She also shared that the parking is so much better at SRU than other college’s especially inner city colleges.

 Yamamoto wanted to become a teacher at the college level because she loves having the academic freedom and the opportunity to start a project and to have creativity in teaching and completing the projects. If she could have one superpower in the world it would be to control her eating and her tongue because sometimes she eats things that she regrets eating and says things that she regrets saying.

Dr. Jason Hilton

What courses are you currently teaching? 

My regular fall schedule includes: Methods of Instruction in Secondary Content, Teaching of Social Studies in Secondary Schools, American Education in the 21st-Century, and I also oversee a number of pre-student teaching field students. Beyond my regular schedule, I am also teaching a FYRST Seminar course and I am teaching once a week at Aliquippa High School as part of the Stonehouse CPH: Humanities Ladder Initiative.

What are you most proud of concerning those courses? 

My students! Slippery Rock students have an energy and excitement about the future that makes me excited to be a part of their journey.

What scholarly/projects are you working on in your classes? 

Blending my scholarly interests with my teaching, I enjoy making sure that my students are up-to-date with the latest ways to infuse technology into all parts of the teaching process, thus preparing students to teach the “digital native” generation. I am also honored to be a part of the Professor Protégé program, which allows me to work with some of our most talented incoming freshman in a research fellowship.

What student stories can you share? 

The best stories come from those connections made that last beyond the SRU experience. I tell my students that I come with a “lifetime guarantee.” Many of them contact me after they graduate to ask me teaching-related questions or to celebrate their accomplishments with me. These are my favorite moments.

What do you do for fun during your free time or school break? 

I like to be outdoors. Between white water kayaking, mountain biking, bouldering, golf, ice hockey and now sailing, I try to stay pretty active. The best moments are when I can share parts of these activities with my two-year old son.

What most do you appreciate about SRU? 

The campus community. My colleagues, both within the College of Education and across the entire university, are some of the most intelligent, professional, productive and dedicated faculty members imaginable.

What made you want to be a faculty member at the college level? 

It is part of a pyramid scheme I have in my mind to change the world. Work with great students at Slippery Rock - they become great teachers -they have their own great students – they go on to do great things - our world is made a better place.

If you could have one super power what would it be? 

Why? I do have a super power, I am an educator! My students have this power as well.

Dr. Michelle Amodei

Dr. Amodei is such a personable, inspiring, motivated and dedicated professor at Slippery Rock University. She is always willing help to students be successful and strive at the things they are passionate about. She is currently teaching a section of FYRST Seminar to freshmen, child development, two sections of formal and informal assessment as well as leadership advocacy and program development. She is very proud of her leadership and advocacy class because she feels that one of her projects she has her students working on allows them to see the bigger picture of the education field. 

Dr. Amodei said she is “always changing and tweaking, and updating” the class so the students can get the most out of it. She says “the students need to learn to become advocates and think about their roles as leaders.” In the Leadership class, she requires the students to complete an advocacy project, where the students work together in groups to identify an issue that impacts children’s and families or teachers. They decide the issue to advocate for, contact stakeholders, go out into the community, gather information and then complete research. She has the students not only write a paper, but present the material to the class and design artifacts that support what they are advocating for. Dr. Amodei states that this project can be “daunting because it’s so abstract” and it’s not concrete like writing a lesson plan. She says “the students learn a lot and feel confident” about their work. This really allows the students to articulate what really matters. The students are not given a list to choose from because Dr. Amodei allows her students to explore on their own by spending the first week discussing issues in Early Childhood and Special Education as well as using information from the current events assignment in the class. 

One student who really inspired her is a junior this year and involved in a student club that she is the faculty advisor for. She is very proud of this student and says “watching her, as seen in other students, evolve into this leader and take on so much responsibility as well as become so passionate about being a professional and a teacher.” Dr. Amodei expressed how hopeful and positive she feels about the future of education and the students as educators. 

She loves watching students’ progress and she is able to see this student excel so much. Raising three children with her husband she finds that she does a lot of running around. She has two boys who are both involved in football and a young girl who is involved in cheerleading, tumbling and swimming. She enjoys running as well as reading. She said “I like to read things that are non-academic in nature such as the Hunger Games” when school is not in session because she is able to take a “brain break” from the academic reading during the semester. 

She is so proud to be a faculty member and professor at SRU because they “strive for excellence, always looking for ways to continuously move forward, and learning how to serve the students best.” She also stated that she is “impressed with the caliber of colleagues that she works with.” 

She got into the higher education field by the opportunities that came her way. She was always working hard, focused on excelling and moving forward as she was a Childcare Director and then approached to take a job with the office of Child Development and Early Learning. She was then able to work with adults and realized she really enjoyed it! Dr. Amodei then received a call from a colleague who she had met through trainings, who was a professor at Grove City College. At that time she had never taught at the college level and her colleague had recommended her to teach her class while she was out on medical leave. She was then an adjunct professor and loved it! Amodei shared that she found her “nitch.” Following that opportunity, she got her doctorate, and said I want to do this! She then worked at other colleges, and when there was an opening at SRU, she went for it because she knew this is where she had always wanted to be. If she could two super powers she would want to read peoples mind because she said its “hard to know peoples intention” as well having never ending energy. 

Dr. Amodei was a great professor to interview for the spotlight because she has so much insight, knowledge and information to share and is so nice to talk to. She is a great role model for students to learn from and gain such experience from.