Hello, my name is Karin Hsieh and this will be my sixth year teaching at Central Elementary School. I am excited to meet your children and get the year started! 

I was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts and graduated from Boston University ‘s School of Management. After working the corporate world for 2 years, I decided that I wanted to work in a field that was more fulfilling. I spent a lot of my time volunteering and later applied and was accepted into the New York City Teaching Fellows (a division of Teach for America), where I taught in a public school in Brooklyn and later received my Masters in Education from Brooklyn College. I was also fortunate enough to attend Columbia University for several summers and became trained in the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. Along with that training I have also received my Certification for Gifted and Talented Education from Hunter College. 

I have previously taught in New York City for 11 years and have worked with students of many abilities. I worked in a school with a heavy ESL population and learned an immense amount about how to scaffold for struggling students. I also made it a point to celebrate the diverse cultures that were represented in my classroom and create a feeling of inclusiveness. Most recently I was teaching in a gifted and talented classroom in a school in Manhattan. It was a great opportunity for me to learn how to engage with students that were achieving above and beyond benchmarks. In that setting I was able to provide enrichment opportunities and interdisciplinary lessons regularly. It was also my first time teaching in a school with a tremendous amount of family involvement and I saw how much the students benefited from this. 

I have an immense love for teaching. Often in the summers you might find me rummaging yard sales and stalking the local library book sales in order to bulk up my classroom library. One of the best things about being a classroom teacher is creating a sense of community for my students and knowing that for the next 10 months that we will become our own little family within Central School. And although I have spent a lot of time continually growing my professional development, my favorite part of teaching is still growing relationships with each one of my students, watching them grow, mature, ask questions and laugh. I love coming to work everyday and I really hope that your students will be just as happy to be there as I am!