Always Wanted to Be a Teacher!

Kathleen is a teacher and the mother of school-aged children.

Her parents were determined to make "education" a priority and demanded their children to do the best they could in school, whether that was an A or a C. "Do your best. That's all we ask." Kathleen is aware how fortunate she was to have parents that saw an education as the most important gift you could give yourself. "No one can EVER take it away from you. Instead of only ten doors of opportunity, a good education will open hundreds of doors from which to choose!"

Kathleen knew she wanted to be a teacher since she was a little girl. She graduated from Winona State University in Minnesota in the 1980's and has been a passionate teacher ever since. She is currently teaching in an elementary school in Illinois but has lived and taught in many states throughout the country. She has experience teaching students in most every grade level.

GETTING THE MOST OUT OF ALL THIS GREAT DATA!

Kathleen developed the instructional and intervention strategies out of frustration for her son who was a struggling reader. She looked at his Reading MAP report and was discouraged to find the same goal area was always the lowest and also showing little progress!

It was then that she decided that in her own classroom, she could and should be doing much more. She was determined to put together real strategies to help kids where they needed it most.

But what and how? It took creativity and common sense to come up with a plan. It took hard work and hundreds of hours to be ready to do it. She implemented a plan that was easy to use because it was founded on instructional techniques she was already using in the classroom. Kathleen put together an organized approach to differentiating the instruction for each student based on the detailed data provided by the NWEA MAP test. "Making Awesome Progress" was doing wonders for her students' confidence and progress! She was asked to present her strategies at the Annual 2009 and 2010 NWEA Conference in Illinois. She has also presented at the National NWEA Conference in Portland in 2010 and will be in 2011. She has been improving the approaches and organizing them so she can share them with as many teachers as possible.

The results were ASTOUNDING in her own classroom. The students' scores have skyrocketed. The kids are so proud of themselves and they should be! Where there was once frustration or concern, there is now CONFIDENCE.

Kathleen Dawson

Founder/Consultant/Teacher

Area of Emphasis

Elementary Teacher, Type 3

Current grade teaching

6th

Years Teaching