Hi! My name is Carmilla Driscal, I live in Cleveland. I prefer to be called Carmilla or Carm.  My email address is cdriscal11@jcu.edu.  I completed my student teaching December 2010.  I was fortunate to get a Long-Term substitute position with Cleveland in January, teaching middle school math and social studies (my licensed areas).  This current Foundations of Education course is my last class for completing my Master's in Education.  I'm so excited.

I'm excited and very anxious at the same time because unfortunately my mother has been hospitalized with pneumonia while trying to recover from a broken hip (a very slow process).  So I'm in the middle of being a primary caregiver, for my mom and my two sons' ages 14 and 10.  I do have a great sister who is also helping with my mother.

So along with learning about the foundations of education and recent research on education, I'm learning about the pros and cons of the medicare system.

I have always enjoyed teaching in some capacity, yet my profession before pursuing education was as an accountant for over 20 years.  I have a tendency to be detailed oriented and have a "thing" for numbers and patterns.  However, I'm a people person, many who know me state that I'm a very patient person (sometimes to a fault). I'm very much interested in the lives of most people I meet and my own self-perception is that I'm an encourager especially to young people.  This is one of the main reasons I pursued teaching middle school.

Since middle school students are at a point where physical, intellectual, and mental changes are most transparent whether rapid or gradual, it's definitely a period of time that requires patience and understanding from an adult that's consistently engaged with them.  I have discovered that each day I must remind myself of this. 

I'm also reminded that like the middle schoolers, even mature adults need to have a sense of security when participating in intellectual and creative risks in the classroom.  This security comes from both one's own self-esteem and the openess or willingness of the educator to allow for risk-taking.  For me, I'm comfortable doing this if I truly believe that what I say or do will matter or make a difference by causing one to reflect, analyze, support with more detail/experience or raise awareness.