Who is Katie Brown?

Today in class we will be meeting with Washington State Teacher of the Year, Katie Brown. Katie Brown is a teacher at Shuksan Middle School in Bellingham Washington. She has been there for 11 years and two years ago transitioned into an ELL specialist. She has been working with families from all different cultures and built a community that  focus on learning the English language. Her work has improved all classrooms and students confidence has increased in the short two years. 

ELL strategies are important to understand in all classes. If a foreign student is struggling with the concept of English, they will struggle with all aspects of school and eventually give up and drop out. Because we want all students to succeed, we must learn to implement all the strategies of ELL teaching. We must make sure these students do not fall behind. 

Katie Brown’s blog is something that I will now keep tabs on because the information she presents is very powerful that all of us must be accountable for in our classrooms. Her main message within all these blog posts is about team work and working together to improve our schools and those struggling every day with the English language. You can tell just by the voice she puts within her blogs that this teacher really truly cares for her school, students, and community. She interacts with all the foreign families, implementing English in their lives. What I find most humble about this women is she is perfectly fine implementing her teachings as a teacher instead of moving up into the administrator position. She is a hands on kind of person who feels that she can impact these lives in the position that she is in.

Some questions that I have for Katie Brown is:
-Where do you get the time to teach these students English with the time frame and curriculum.
 -What advice do you have for us future teachers that we should take into consideration before finding a job?
-How are we to learn about ELL before jumping into the work force?