Pamela Schmidt

My Favorite Teaching Moment

In 1990 I and a group of teachers decided to take all of our high school students on a field trip to Chicago for a couple of days. We arranged a number of fund raisers so all of the 140 rural high school students would be able to go. It was so successful, four years later we took the high school students to St. Louis for three days with no cost to the students. Many of our students hadn’t even been out of the county they lived in and many others had never traveled out of state. Seeing students learning and enjoying zoos, museums, and cultural experiences in the large cities and being praised on their behavior by people we would encounter was my most rewarding moments in my 25 years of teaching.

What I enjoy most about teaching is making a positive difference in the lives of others no matter what age and providing them the support and encouragement so they will stretch and reach beyond where they thought they could go.

Why I Love Teaching PLS Courses

In 1994 I was one of the first teachers to achieve National Board Certification. There is no doubt in my mind that the reason I was able to achieve certification was because of my PLS experiences. PLS courses taught me how students learn, gave me strategies to use to differentiate so could be more effective and caused me to be able to analyze my teaching and explain why I taught the way I taught. PLS courses gave me the opportunity to become a successful teacher and make a positive impact on my students. Teaching the PLS courses allows me the opportunity to make that difference with other educators and to help them develop the skills and strategies to make teaching easier and more rewarding for them.

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