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Welcome to my little space on the internet! My name is Jennifer and I am the face behind Skating through Literacy. My business name developed from my two biggest passions in life: ice skating and teaching little people how to read.
I was born in raised in the Akron Canton area in Ohio by a family of outstanding educators. Both my grandparents and my parents have had a variety of roles within many public school systems including teaching at a variety of levels, coaching multiple sports, experience in special education, and guidance counseling. You could say teaching is in my blood. While my family always discouraged me from going into teaching, there has never been any denying it is what I was put on this earth to do. From a young age I’ve had a natural ability to deeply connect with people, to teach, and to lead.
Christmas of my 4th grade year I woke up to find my first pair of ice skates from Santa. While 4th grade is relatively late in figure skating years, I was instantly in love and the rest is history. Suffering a back injury pretty early in my skating career, I migrated towards a discipline in skating that required less jumping known as synchronized skating. If I wasn’t completely hooked to the ice before, discovering the element of a team, sealed the deal. I became fully committed to pursuing my skating dreams as far as I could go. God bless my parents as they spent so many years of their life driving me all over the Cleveland area multiple hours daily in all kinds of fun weather, sometimes even to multiple rinks in a single day just to give me every opportunity possible.
My crazy passion for the ice ultimately lead to me Western Michigan University where I became deeply involved with the skating program. I skated for Western’s Senior Synchronized Team for 4 years, cross-skated (which means skated on 2 teams) with the Collegiate team for 2 years, and earned the right to skate for Team USA for 2 years. We competed internationally in Mislok, Hungary and Milan, Italy. My senior year I became President of the Western’s Skating Teams all while doing this crazy little experience called student teaching. By the time I walked across the stage at graduation, I had accomplished every goal I had set out for myself including medals at the National level, international experience, and a Bachelors degree in Elementary Education.
After graduation, I was hired as a paraprofessional in the district in which I student taught in, continued on to teach math during summer school, and was hired the following year into my first full time position. I taught 2 years in second grade before being displaced to another elementary school within our district where I taught 2nd for 2 more. I was then offered an opportunity to move up to 3rd grade to be the departmentalized reading teacher for the grade level, where I have now been for the past 4 years. During this time I also earned my Masters Degree in Curriculum & Instruction, giving me an even greater understanding of best instructional practices.
Departmentalization has challenges in a grade as young as 3rd, but has provided me with so much knowledge, experience, and training around the science of learning to read and general reading education. In my current position, I am responsible for over 80 3rd graders reading development, test scores, data, and interventions, which is a job I take very seriously. Now, I want to share my knowledge, experience, and the tips and tricks I’ve learned when working with such a large & vast range of students with other teachers so they too can help all students see themselves as the capable readers and writers that they are.
Most of my life happens at a guided reading table, on a sheet of ice, or at a computer creating teaching resources for others; however I do have a personal life away from all of it 🙂 I am married to my best friend, turned life partner, who I met in college named Ian. He is almost the exact opposite of me in every way. Our balance is unique, challenging, and more than I could have known I needed in a partner! We are the proud dog parents of chocolate labs. We recently lost our oldest best boy at 14. 5 years of age (RIP Harper) and currently are spoiling his son, Junior, who is going to be 8.
One of our absolute favorite things to do together is travel, which you’ll find shared on this page. I am a firm believer in getting outside of your own cultural bubble at every chance you get. On the travel section of this page you can find details about traveling on a teaching budget, planning & scheduling big international trips, and other fun experiences I’ve been lucky enough to have. My wanderlust is huge part of what makes me, me and therefore deserves it’s own space in my corner of the internet. Some day, I hope to walk the footsteps of my grandmother before me, who has been to every continent, and *almost* every country, on this beautiful planet Earth.
So that’s a little insight to what makes me uniquely me. While my main goal of this space is to connect with educators, provide products that can help streamline your classroom practices, and inspire quality teaching around reading, it wouldn’t be my space without a nod to the other large aspects of my life that have defined all that am today. No matter what brought you to this page, I am so thankful you’re here. I hope we can connect, learn, and grow together in this beautiful, messy, & imperfect world we call teaching.