Kristen B.

Meet Kristen

• Comfortable with pets

I grew up in a community that values family, hard work, collaboration, and trust. For as long as I can remember I wanted to be a teacher and began working with children as a babysitter when I was 12. I loved sharing my passions of gardening, music (guitar, banjo, piano, ukulele), and art with children because of their eagerness to learn. In high school I participated in an elementary teaching internship, which solidified my desire to become an educator. I began my teaching career as a fifth grade teacher (3 years) and then moved to teaching kindergarten (4 years). I believe teaching is all about inspiring children to love learning, to help them see their full potential, to build on their strengths, to acknowledge and work on personal challenges, and to help students develop strong character. I strive to create an environment in my classroom where children feel at home, Read more safe, and welcome. I encourage my students to take risks and to push themselves. I highly value kindness, empathy, compassion, responsibility, integrity, creativity, accountability, and work ethic, and try to instill these values in my students. Working as a teacher is wonderful, but our system is broken. Standardized testing has become the top priority and so school children are deprived of play, social emotional learning, autonomy, curiosity, social studies and science. I am burnt out of the one-size-fits-all approach our schools have taken, and I want to be able to ignite of love of learning in children, building on individual strengths and interests.

Trust & safety

Experience