My name is Amy Garrison, otherwise known to my students as Miss Garrison. I am currently a super senior at Grand Valley State University (if only the title "super" gave me super powers instead of super study skills...). I started my time at Grand Valley as a business major but soon found that my real passion was working with students with special needs. I am now pursuing a major in special education with endorsements in cognitive and emotional impairments and plan to graduate the Spring of 2017.
Growing up, I was always taught the importance of volunteering and helping out in my community. For this reason, I work with the Special Olympics Summer Games every May (SOMI). Working with the athletes inspires me to not only experience their joy, but also to pass it on. I want my future students to feel accomplished when they succeed in the classroom, I want them to know that their hard work has paid off and I want them to know that I am proud of them. Other than this personal experience, I also have had the opportunity to work as a Teacher Assistant at New Groningen Elementary in Zeeland Public School district. Working with a group of funny, caring, and determined 4th and 5th graders I was challenged as a teacher but it also confirmed, without a doubt, that this is my dream career.
Technology in and out of the classroom can seem intimidating at first, and does not come naturally to me. However, as I progress as a teacher and further into my professional career, I realize the importance of utilizing it for my students and in my personal life. All of the students that I have worked with have had access to personal computers or tablets and I have gotten used to incorporating the use of apps and/or research into my lesson plans. The more familiar students are with technology, the easier it will be to apply the classroom skills to their real lives. During my time teacher assisting I also used the SmartBoard and projector for whole class instruction and often use the ELMO to share student's work with their classmates. I have also used my personal and others Weebly's and Pinterest boards to share and create lesson plans.
Although teaching and class take up much of my time, I am a server at On the Border and often smell of tacos and salsa. However, my fiance doesn't mind much and we still make time for planning our wedding coming up this August! I have been blessed with a wonderful husband-to-be who doesn't mind helping me with lesson plans and hearing all about my awesome students. I am so excited to see what this next year-and-a-half bring and cannot wait to have a classroom of my own!
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