About Us – notesfromahappyteacher

Rachel A. Smith

I have been the field of education for as long as I can remember. As a child, I spent many afternoons sitting in the back of my mother’s middle school Language Arts classroom hoping that one day I could be just like her. From 2005-2007, I had the privilege of working alongside my mother at Benchmark School in Media, PA. After two amazing years, I moved on to Twin Valley Middle School, where I currently teach 8th grade Language Arts. Teaching has always been my dream; I love my job.

Stacy Dunleavy

I have been laughing, crying, and pulling my hair out over student writing since I started teaching 16 years ago. I taught kindergarten, first grade and second grade for most of my career. I loved reading their emergent writing and being the teacher who first convinced them that yes, they were important authors. After 13 years being in the trenches among six, seven, and eight year old readers and writers I was given the opportunity to take on a new position. Coordinator of Teaching and Learning, it sounded fancy and important; the only problem was it was in the middle school. Middle school, I didn’t know anything about those big kids with raging hormones, I was scared.

Well here I am, coordinating teaching and learning in the middle school and I love it. Teaching teachers about teaching writing has brought about challenges, frustrations, and celebrations that I never would have anticipated. The best part is convincing middle school writers that yes, they are important authors.

I now have my own middle school writer at home, my oldest daughter is a fifth grader at my middle school. My first grade daughter allows me to still enjoy first grade writing, and my three year old son will have no choice but to love writing!

Damon Ebanks here from the University Scranton ( http://www.uscranton.com ) and I wanted to drop you a line and just compliment your site and all of its’ wonderful recourses. I was looking around at a few different sites that seek to inspire teachers, and I definitely thought yours was one of the best.

That being said, I also noticed you have some great content related to how teachers can improve. My role at U Scranton is to draw attention to our Online Graduate Degrees designed for working teachers. We are a nationally recognized, reliable source on the web and I was wondering if you’d be interested in us writing a guest post for your blog.

Please let me know if the above provides you with the information you need to review and consider us for a Guest Blog. I can be reached via email at [email protected], or, if you’d like to talk about this by phone, my direct number is (813) 621-6200 ext 4167.

If not, thanks for the time and keep up the good work!
Best Wishes,

Damon Ebanks

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