About Me

Jessica Gleadall
EDUC 6005- Foundations: Early Childhood
Group 1
9/2/12

My Superpower: Teaching Kids to Read

I have always wanted to work with children since I was a young child myself. While in college, I worked at a daycare to begin my training and enjoyed every minute of it. I began my teaching career as an early pre-k teacher at Primrose Schools after graduating from Eastern Illinois University in December 2007. I graduated with a B.S. in Early Childhood Education with my focus in Child and Family Studies. Two years later, I was offered a kindergarten teaching position at a public school in Tennessee.  I have been teaching kindergarten since August of 2009. My school is a Title 1 school, which means the majority of our students are on free or reduced lunch. We also live in a military town, and our students are very transient. This brings a challenge to my job because most of my kindergarteners do not have any exposure to the alphabet, reading, writing or math before the walk into my classroom. So they come into kindergarten knowing very little at the beginning of the year and I turn them into readers. Every year I am amazed at how much my students grow from August to May.  I love to share all the fun things we do in my classroom on my teacher blog. I spend a lot of time reading other teacher blogs as well. I love creating my own materials to use in the classroom and sharing them with others. Outside of my teaching career, you can find me spending time with my family and friends, decorating my home, gardening, reading and spoiling my one-year old niece.
I believe I will bring passion and wisdom from my teaching experiences to the online learning community. I love what I do and am so excited to further my education so I can share that passion with future early childhood educators. I know my biggest challenge will be to balance my teaching career with the online assignments for the masters program, but hope that my passion and excitement will see me through until the end! I am so thankful and excited to be part of a program that will allow me to continue teaching and doing what I love, while trying to better myself through my own education.