English/Language Arts History/Social Science Math Reading Science ESL Fine Arts Foreign Language Geography Physical Ed Performing Arts Technology
Grades:
1
My Philosophy I believe in fostering lifetime learners. Along with the academic goals, it is important that my first graders learn and also internalize that school is a good and safe place to be. I try to create a place in my classroom where students learn to be good citizens of our community and take ownership of the space around them. It is my hope that my students learn to make good choices.
My Community Nimitz is situated in Sunnyvale, even though we are part of the Cupertino Union School District. We are in walking distance of a park and grocery stores. We've taken walking field trips to the park, to Safeway, and to a dentist's office. There are families from all over the world living in our neighborhoods -- most of them with limited English.
My Environment Nimitz is a very diverse school. We are a K-5 school. We have students from so many parts of the world. We are one of the ELD centers in our district. So we have many classes where every child is an English Language Learner. The range of English speaking ability is big -- from no English at all, to almost fluent. There is at least one ELD class per grade level.
My Roles and Responsibilities I teach first grade ELD, which means all of my first graders are English Language Learners. I usually have between 15-20 children in my class. Many of them come with no English, but leave in June holding conversations, reading, and writing in English. It's amazing to see the amount of growth that these first graders make in one school year.
