The Fall 2007 application round is complete and we are pleased to announce the selection of our latest Scholar. Johanna Snedeker is pursuing her Masters Degree at St. Michael's College with the goal of being a teacher for English language learners. She is currently completing her fall 2007 practicum experience with the ESL teacher and students at Barnes Elementary School in Burlington. Ms. Snedeker has lived in Vermont since 2002 and has also worked as a 4-H Educator for the University of Vermont Extension Service in St. Johnsbury and Newport. She is happy to be raising her family in the Northeast Kingdom.
Ms. Snedeker traveled widely before settling in Barton. The daughter of Phillipine immigrants, she was born in Chicago and raised in San Diego. After obtaining her B.A. in English Literature and Communications at the University of California, she joined the Peace Corps where she taught English in a rural community in Poland. Upon returning to the United States, she obtained an M.A. in Recreation, Parks and Tourism Administration at Western Illinois University before deciding to return to the teaching profession after moving to Vermont. One of her St. Mike’s professors predicts that she will be “an immense asset to the English Language Learner community” in the Kingdom. Another professor raves that “[e]ven in a class of bright graduate students, she stands out.”
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In other news, the 2007 Creating a Welcoming Community Conference was a big success. We had over 250 attendees from across Vermont (as well as folks from Maine and Massachusetts). They were primarily from the social services field, with many from higher education, K-12 (teachers, liaisons and guidance counselors), government (several state departments were represented), municipal government, law enforcement, and health care.
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The evaluation forms showed that people really want/need/enjoy a conference such as this. There were a high number of gratuitous remarks at the bottom of the form saying “thanks” or “great job” and exclamation marks were liberally used. 72% of those filling out the forms said that they would definitely attend next year, and 92% said they would definitely recommend it to others. Last year there were some complaints about our registration process but this year we saw improvement in the evaluation of the process. Attendees raved about our keynote speaker (97% rated him 4 or 5 [out of 5]) and virtually all of our workshops received high praise. We have already had a recap meeting to discuss what went well and what didn’t and have begun the process of planning for next year. If you are interested in being part of those efforts, please don’t hesitate to contact me. For those who missed it, here is a link to the conference brochure.
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The Vermont Teacher Diversity Scholarship Program is thrilled to announce that nine of our Scholars have obtained teaching positions for the 2007-08 academic year. Their areas of expertise include ELL, language arts, math, Spanish and science and they are scattered throughout the state from from Bennington and Windsor up to Morrisville and Island Pond. Our remaining Scholars are pursuing their education at schools across the state, looking forward to the day when they will also be in front of a classroom.