Pre-Kindergarten Teacher

At 16 years old, I embraced a new home in the USA with my family, who instilled in me the principles of perseverance, discipline, and respect, guiding me as role models. As a newcomer, I started my journey as a student at Elizabeth High School, where I found a safe place to learn, growth, make friends, and find a community that later showed me the values of our culture, traditions, and a path to success. During my journey as a student, I had the privilege of having teachers that become life instructors. In Elizabet High School I joined a class called “Introduction to Education” recommended by Mrs. Santangelo and Mr. Rodriguez, who were my dear teachers at the time. I was part of the class for two years in my junior and senior year. During this time, they instilled in me the love for teaching; helping students feel welcome and part of a diverse community like the one we have in Elizabeth.

My desire to help and connect with families grew along with my passion for teaching. Teaching quickly became my career goal. After graduating in 2006 from Elizabeth High School, I attended Union County College to improve my English language skills to pursue a career in Education. After completion of my ESL classes in Union County College, I attended Kean University where I graduated and began teaching in my dream place, Elizabeth New Jersey. The same city that had welcomed me and my family and sparked my love of teaching. In the pursuit of furthering my professional education, I completed my Masters in Teaching English To Speakers of Other Languages, (TESOL) in 2019.

Since acquiring my college education, I have been working with families and students in many ways. I enjoy guiding families and helping them both in our school community and neighborhoods. More so, especially since I have firsthand experience of trying to find my way in a new country, I have found fulfillment in helping those families navigate their way in our beautiful country. Now, after 21 years in this great nation, my home, I have started my own beautiful family. I am eternally grateful for my experiences and to continue to be inspired by my students, my supportive husband and inspiring boys, who motivate me to strive for excellence every day.

As an educator I feel that I make a difference in my students' lives every single day, by helping them realize how uniquely amazing they all are in their own ways. I strive to allocate time to discuss current events that are relevant to my students’ lives, I love to encourage my young learners to express their opinions, feelings and share their likes and dislikes. To ensure a learning environment where families are welcomed and create a strong foundation between home-school connections, I invite families to our classroom and to the variety of workshops our school has to offer. When we connect with families and welcome them into our classrooms, the students experience the support they need to succeed. As a classroom community, I feel that it is essential to have families participate in different activities to show the cultural differences we all share. I often invite parents to work on activities that involve sharing family traditions. I believe that activities like this help build strong connections. Additionally, I strongly believe that music and movement play an essential role in my student's lives at this age. I have seen throughout my years in the classroom that music has no language, all children dance and learn through music, not only do they get to see cultural differences through language, but also in the videos we share where cultural differences are embraced. I engage students of all backgrounds and abilities by incorporating literature, films, and multimedia resources from various cultures and countries into my lessons. This exposes students to different perspectives, traditions, and ways of life,fostering empathy and cultural understanding.

Social Worker

The factors that influenced you to choose your profession are being able to make a difference in students and parents’ lives, understanding behaviors of different personalities, and helping to build positive relationships. My responsibilities as a social worker include making myself available to teachers, staff and parents by having an open-door policy, building positive rapport with the students to help them learn coping strategies, promoting social emotional learning to help build a positive school climate through parent workshops, participating in school committees, and providing professional development for teachers.