RENATE HARRIS

Hello!  My name is Renate Harris. I have taught SPED for 10 years and overall taught for 28 years.  I have enjoyed all the lessons I have learned from my students, their family's and the staff that I have worked with.  During my tenure in SPED, I not only taught my classes, but I was a supervising teacher for Interns with the local university, I also trained and over saw all new teachers so that they were squinted with all the computer programs we had at our school.  I also worked as the resource teacher for the new teachers, I planned curriculum for our school wide summer themes.  All of the extras were things I really enjoyed and feel I excelled in.  

My classes were challenging, but we made some good inroads towards the future.  There are a couple of cases that I am the most proud of from my time at Altus Academy.  The first was a student who made me his person from the day I walked into class.  I was told he shied away from staff and everyone was surprised to see him attach himself to me. I worked with him on opening up to others and having some success with being surrounded in a group.  He was able to finally let me go and sit in a group and participate in the activity we would be doing.  I felt that by the time he aged out and moved on he was a more calm individual.  The other case I am so proud of my students achievement came from teaching her how to sit at the table and to feed herself with a fork/spoon without grabbing food off the plate of the student who sat next to her. Her mother was great at following exactly how I was doing it so that my student was getting the same messages from both of us.  This took the entire school year. This still brings a tear to my eye.

There you have it.  That is some of the information you may not have gotten from my resume.

I have taught English to student in 7th grade through 11th grade.  I spent 10 years working in SPED.

The program that I taught was the Basics program.  It was a basic skills class with reading, writing and math coursess. My students favorite parts of the basic skills classes were domestics where we would watch cooking videos and then the students would have the opportunity to recreate a recipe at the end of the week.  The other class they liked was community.  We would learn about places in our area and then take trips to them (fire department, 99 cent store, grocery store, etc.).  

Overall I am someone who goes over the top and the extra mile to help my students and my coworkers.  I love a challenge and I don't shy away from hard work.