I am Megan Jo Reed. I grew up outside of Washington, a small town in southeast Iowa. I am a farm girl with one older sister and one younger brother as well as my parents. We spent a lot of our time on our farm playing outside, helping dad with the animals and mom cooking supper. I spent all of my school years in the same school district. I when to Stewart Elementary School where I spent kindergarten through third grade and Lincoln Upper Elementary School where I attended fourth through sixth grade. I was involved in a few activities as an elementary student, though rarely did I have more than one after school activity at a time. At one point or another I was involved in all of the following: dance lessons, piano lessons, Invent Iowa, and 4-H.

I want to be a teacher because I know I have the patients to work with special needs student and there is such a shortage of special needs teachers I feel it is my responsibly to contribute as much as I possibly can to the profession. It is also a very satisfying job. You can see that you are making a difference every time a student ties their own shoe or verbally constructs a sentence on their own. The children get so excited when they accomplish something that they have been working so hard to learn how to do. I love being a part of that process.

I have three main goals as a professional educator, effectiveness, organization, and communication. I need to have effective ways of delivering my lessons; they must be interesting and to the point so I do not lose the interest of my students. I also must present them in a variety of ways so I reach each and every child’s learning style. I need to be organized so I can get everything done that needs to be done in a day, as well as keep track of all of the important paperwork that special education entails. Communication is key to any education. Parents must know what is going on at school and teachers must know what is going on at school so all issues are addressed and understood.