Stephanie+Leslie's+Tech+Portfolio

Greetings! My name is Stephanie Leslie. I am getting my Masters in Teaching at Seattle University and I am soon to become a Special Education teacher!

My hope as a future educator is to help my students feel liberated and believe in themselves. My lifelong experiences with children have taught me that childhood is both a joyful but fragile time. I would like to bring sensitivity and compassion to my future classroom. I have been a lifelong volunteer at the Special Olympics. Here I learned the power of compassion and teamwork. Upon graduating high school I began teaching gymnastics and fell in love with every one of my student athletes. It was my experiences coaching that affirmed my commitment to become a teacher. I have since been working with preschool children in both Montessori classrooms and developmental inclusion programs. I am highly inspired by the inclusion model and hope to help make it effective in my future school community. I also had the opportunity to work at an elementary school in India for one month during my undergraduate studies at the University of Washington. My time in India taught me that no matter what environment you are in, all children have the same basic needs. Each of these preparatory experiences have been wonderful and I cannot wait to meet my future students!

Thank you for visiting my page! Each of the tech tools I include are apps which would be helpful in special education classrooms. Check them out!

[|Tech Tool 1] This is a choice board which helps students wit limited speech a way to comminicate their thoughts and needs. It has different categories, such as word menues that would be useful during a math lesson, ones that would be useful during reading and writing, ones that would helpful during social activities such as lunch, and so on. I have seen these used effectively in classrooms to help give children the ability to express self initiated choices that they would not easly be able to otherwise communicate. This app is only appropriate for a child that is non-verbal. [|Tech Tool 2] This app teaches sign language. The use of sign is a helpful communication tool for all learners, not just deaf and hard of hearing students. The use of sign can aid in both classroom management and inclusion. As the visual species we are, visual cues can be more effective than spoken ones. [|Tech Tool 3] Skype can be a powerful classroom tool because it brings students face to face and able to actually converse with the corresponding person. This can be a useful diversity tool as well because it can expose children to people and cultures that they might not experience in their home community.