Taliah's career began as an elementary teacher in Nevada and Texas where I taught for 10 years. Teaching is a calling and her way of giving back to our communities. Throughout her 10 years in the classroom, she worked with third and fourth-grade students in all content areas. These areas included science, social studies, math, reading, and language arts. Her experience includes being a departmentalized teacher as well as self contained. I have been a grade level lead, mentor teacher, tutoring supervisor, club leader, PTO secretary, and also runner up for campus teacher of the year. For the last three years, she has worked as a teacher specialist, on an elementary campus, with teachers from early childhood to 4th grade. One of Taliah's missions has been to close gaps through aligned Tier I instruction, cooperative learning groups, and small group instruction. As a teacher specialist, she worked to train educators on research based instructional practices and collaborated with teachers, campus, and district leaders to analyze data, set, and accomplish goals. These trainings and professional development opportunities were district and campus wide. During that time, I lead professional development sessions on various topics including Aggressive Monitoring, Instructional Alignment, Cooperative Learning, Kagan structures, Math Mondays, CHAMPS, and more. I also facilitated PLC meetings and worked as campus testing coordinator for MAP growth, district level, and campus level assessments. Taliah developed a student work analysis protocol and system for reviewing data.
