UNM Graduate Student spotlight

Dana Murray attends the University of New Mexico, San Juan Center in Farmington. She teaches second grade and will graduate with her Masters in Elementary Education. For her inquiry she is conducting home visits. As she gets to know the families better by going into their homes, she hopes this will improve her relationships with them as well as strengthen their academic success. So far, the parents have been cooperative and Dana has seen a huge change in behaviors as well as better relationships with parents and students.

Mary Durfey is an MA student in Elementary Education at the University of New Mexico, San Juan Center. She is an elementary art teacher doing her teacher practitioner research on choice-based studio art experiences with her fifth grade students. Mary will be presenting her practitioner research at the Annual College of Education Graduate Student Colloquium on April 8, 2014.

May 2014

Devin Bozzelli will be graduating with an MA in Elementary Education from UNM in May 2014. She is currently teaching self-contained 6th grade on the Navajo Reservation. She came to New Mexico as a Teach for America Corp Member, previously Devin was studying Theater Management at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Upon entering the classroom, she anticipated working with a group of students that loved learning and more specifically loved reading because she had always loved every aspect of school growing up. However, after a few months she began to notice that there was a strong dislike towards the reading block and she quickly attributed this dislike towards the scripted reading program that she was using in her classroom. Finally, Devin reached a point when she realized that she needed to begin using the scripted reading program more as a resource and less as a curriculum. Through her research, her classroom has become an environment of learners that enjoy reading exponentially more than they did when the school year began. Devin feels more empowered as a teacher writing her own lessons and her students feel more invested in their learning.

April 2014

Melissa Hughes is an MA in Elementary Education at the University of New Mexico. Her research inquiry is based on what happens when she gets more involved in her school community? She has been sending out more flyers and newsletters informing her student's parents about what is going on in their classroom, socializing at extracurricular activities, and visiting students at their homes. She recently completed her fourth consecutive year teaching on the Navajo Nation.

Rita McGrath is completing her Master’s in Elementary Education through UNM. She has taught for 30 years and is currently a NM Pre-K consultant. She has noticed the pool of teachers for hire is almost non-existent in some communities in New Mexico. She would like to see more qualified teachers being hired in every school in New Mexico. Her research project takes a close up view of a new teacher with no experience or training in the field of teaching. She wonders what is needed to appropriately support and retain new teachers. As she supports this new teacher, she uses a coaching approach. This has improved her own skill of coaching as an added bonus.

Amanda Champany is finishing her Masters in Education at the University of New Mexico, San Juan Center. She has worked with educational programs in England, South Korea, Nepal and the Navajo Nation of New Mexico. She is currently teaching in the middle school gifted program in Farmington, New Mexico. She is interested in helping diverse learners access their full potential through Project-based Learning. Recently, she has presented with her cohort at the College of Education Graduate Colloquium and will be presenting at the San Juan Chapter of the New Mexico Association of Gifted later this month.