Introduction

Hello everyone! My name is Sarah. I am a senior (FINALLY!!!!!!!!!) in the UNCW Elementary Education program. I live out in Richlands with my husband David and our dachshund Tokyo.

David and I are high school sweethearts. We have been married for 3 years and are loving every second.

This is us from 14-20

 David is in the Navy so we have had the opportunity to move around a bit. We lived in Rhode Island for a few years and we have been in North Carolina for a year. We both love to travel so, for the most part, the experience has been awesome. The only downside to moving around is you never graduate!!! I transferred to the University of Rhode Island as a junior and had to go back and retake so many gen. ed. classes that I was not able to get through all of my major classes before we had to move again. I then transferred to UNCW and had to retake classes to meet this university's requirements as well. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and am so pumped to finally be able to start my career. I love to be outdoors and can't wait to move back to the mountains or somewhere with good hiking! I am an introvert so I enjoy being a homebody.

MATH

I feel like this is an accurate portrayal of my early Math experiences:

 I didn't really start to do well in Math until high school and I have never come to appreciate it. I do know that it is a necessary skill and I hope that I will be able to foster positive attitudes towards Math in my future classroom.

• Math is... a necessary evil  :)
• When it comes to learning Mathematics, I feel... that practice makes perfect. I wish it did not take me so long to realize that home work is actually very beneficial! When I finally went from being bad at Math to OK, I would go home and put off my Math homework because I dreaded it. I would end up rushing through and just writing in answers to get it done. When I finally did start to actually sit down and do my Math homework, I found it surprising how much easier Math class became. 
• When it comes to teaching Mathematics, I feel... I am a believer in mnemonic devices and other tricks! To this day I still run through Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally and the little song my Geometry teacher taught us so we wouldn't confuse circumference and area of a circle. I feel like my "aha" moment for Math came in high school. I know that there were formulas in my life before my first Algebra class, but the way they were taught never made it click for me. I know that formulas aren't necessarily "tricks" but that is how my Algebra teacher explained them. "You want to find this? Well this formula finds that! You literally just plug in this number and this number into the formula. Then you have your answer. That is literally all you have to do" I feel like it gave me a clear template that I could build off of. 
• Elementary Mathematics should be... encouraging! I feel like the most devastating thing that can happen in Math is the development of a negative attitude. That negative association follows you for life!
• Being good at Mathematics means... being a critical thinker. Something that I learned way too late in my academic life is that there are many ways to solve a problem. Someone who is good in Mathematics can see a problem and apply a concept even if it isn't the concept that is being discussed. 
• Good teachers should encourage their students to apply critical thinking. They should expose them to frequent opportunities to build these skills. They should be encouraging and supportive and constantly challenging their students to go farther. 

Who would you talk to?

If I could pick someone to sit down and talk to I would choose Steve Irwin. His programs were a major part of my childhood and I feel like he shaped a lot of my personality growing up (for better or worse). Growing up in the middle of no where, I spent a lot of time outdoors playing in the woods and surrounded by animals. My parents used to get so mad at me because our yard quickly became a hot spot for stray cats because I would sneak bowls of cat food outside. They eventually accepted what was happening and bought a big bowl to keep on the back porch. This led to other visitors such as raccoons and opossums which, much to my parents' dismay, I would also try to touch and feed. My husband and I visited Mexico last year and he told me that we could never live anywhere with a lot of wild life because I wanted to touch everything! The joke is on him though because I got to pet a coati!

I was constantly getting in trouble for bringing frogs, lizards, and turtles into the house. Since most of the cats that hung around the house were fairly feral and because I was the only one in my family interested/patient enough to earn their trust, every summer when the cats had kittens, it was my job to find the litters and to make sure they were comfortable around people so we could find them homes. In high school I was active with our county animal shelter and fostered a lot of cats and dogs. I can not wait to not be a renter anymore so that I can start fostering again!

I really admire Steve Irwin because of the immense impact he had on wild life conservation across the globe.
Most of all, it was clear by listening to him talk for 2 seconds that he genuinely loved animals and he believed in his cause. He did so much good in the short time he had and he left a powerful legacy that is continuing his work. It has always been on my bucket list to visit the Australia Zoo (the zoo that his father started as a reptile conservatory) and I only wish I could had met him as well.