 Master Teacher, Jan began her teaching career
at age five. She taught her neighborhood buddies how to
vaccinate ants with tiny sewing needles, believing that
the vaccination clinic would benefit the resident ants
immeasurably by keeping away unwanted diseases. Keeping
her dream alive to teach, she shut down the clinic, put
the sharps aside and graduated from the University of Northern
Colorado (B.A, 1971) in Special Education. Her first
year of teaching was in Ouray, Colorado, where she taught
Kindergarten and Special Education. In 1972, she
was awarded a fellowship and entered graduate school, completing
her M.A (Special Education) in 1973. From there,
she taught a special needs school in Jefferson County,
Colorado, worked as an evaluator for Child Find in Longmont,
and established a program for the physically handicapped,
subsequently teaching for the program after it was established. She
then became a Pre-Academic teacher for Boulder Valley Schools,
teaching five and six-year-old children with significant
emotional and educational needs with a trans-disciplinary
team approach. Many of these children were gifted
as well. After some years, she was called to teach
in the "regular" classroom, and taught kindergarten
and second grade for twelve years at Douglas Elementary
School in Boulder. Dr. Diana Howard, a respected
and talented teacher of the talented and gifted and principal
became Jan's inspiration to learn more about gifted children.
With a keen interest in literacy, Jan presented at Regis
University’s Literacy Conferences, NAEYC's conference
and several Speech/Language conferences with her team. She
has been nominated for many teaching awards including the
Governor’s Award for Excellence in Education, Endowment
for the Arts in Education, the Amgen Teacher of the Year
Award, the Disney Teaching Award, and has been the recipient
of many BVSD grants. She was chosen to be an exchange teacher
in La Serena, Chile and had the opportunity to briefly
teach and visit numerous schools in Kaitaia and Mangonoui,
New Zealand where her daughter taught. The most significant
accomplishment in her life has been to have raised her
children, now grown. Jan traveled as a tutor for a family
with four children to Africa and Thailand for three months
in 2005. She spent time in Egypt, Kenya, South Africa,
Ghana and Thailand, never to be the same after watching
the moon set in another part of the world. Jan’s
travel bag is always packed and ready for a travel opportunity,
a new adventure. Janet is looking forward to being a part
of the RMS family, knowing it will be a journey in itself—no
travel paraphernalia will be necessary. She comes
with an open heart and willing hands.
Here is what Jan has to say about her teaching philosophy. “As
a teacher who has followed her passion for many years, I
hold many abiding deep beliefs about teaching children. I
believe that the teacher must be dedicated to the development
of the whole child by engaging in active observation, establishing
meaningful interactions, delighting their minds, tending
to their hearts, modeling good character traits, documenting
their learning journeys and creating a safe, respectful,
inviting environment. Such a classroom should teach children
how to be in the world, internalizing social and intellectual
learning that they will carry with them in all of their personal
and school lives. By being mindful about children’s'
emotional, intuitive, physical, perceptive as well as cognitive
aspects, an optimum learning environment will include exploration,
metacognition (thinking about thinking), encouragement, humor,
problem solving, high and clearly defined expectations, discovery
and making connections with ideas, people, etc. Creating
such an atmosphere will encourage creative and complex thinking
in each child so the teacher will know how and when to expand
each child's exploration and enrichment opportunities. Children
want to make sense of their world and have an internal need
to learn about things. They experience, absorb and discover
new information and create new constructs in the process.
It is my purpose as a teacher to help develop thinking, feeling,
responsible, caring and motivated people who will in time
take their place in the world and create meaningful, productive
lives!”
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