Special Guest: Dr. Ann Marie Taylor Part 1

0:17 SPEAKER_00: Hello everyone. This is the road to an effective classroom environment, and I am your host, Lashanta. I have been traveling for the past three weeks, different conferences, educational conferences, making presentations, and in my travels, I have met a very unique person in education, and her name is Dr. Anne Marie Taylor. And she is joining me today as my guest on this episode. How are you, Dr. Taylor? Thank you. Great. Again, thank you for joining me today. And we're just going to jump in, and I want you to tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and your roles that you have played in education and what your current role is.

1:02 SPEAKER_00: If you can share that with our listeners.

1:05 SPEAKER_01: Sure. I started out uh about 18 years ago in public education. Um, my background is actually in criminal justice, and I went back to school to get my master's in special education. I've been a special ed teacher, uh, a special ed educator. I've worked with students with all sorts of disabilities, but most of my work has been students with mild to moderate disabilities. In 2008, I served as the South Carolina Teacher of the Year. Actually, I was the first special ed teacher to ever receive that honor in South Carolina, which was uh a big deal for my students and for the work that we do in special education.

1:45 SPEAKER_01: Uh, worked um at the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement as teacher of the year in 2008, and then put a grant through the State Department to create an initiative and a training to help support and mentor beginning special ed teachers. We did that for three years and went to Aiken County and worked at the District Office of Professional Development for one, and then to Eagle County, where I just finished my sixth year as a special education director there. I'm actually transitioning the summer to the Palmetto State Teachers Association, where I'll be supporting beginning teachers as well as veteran teachers in special education all over the state.

2:27 SPEAKER_01: And this is actually the first special ed position they've ever had at PSTA. So that's exciting. Um and I'm also going to collect some data and do some research on induction teachers while I'm there. So that's what I've spent the last 18 years doing in education. Um, got an awesome career, and I've learned a lot all along the way.

2:47 SPEAKER_00: Well, great. Um, those are actually quite a few different um areas that you've worked in, but as you said, they've been mostly geared in special education, um, which it takes a special person to work in special education, as it does in education in general. And I know that the work that you've done has been impressive as you've been moving up in your career. So, now in your new role in helping induction teachers in their process as they are working in their classrooms, what are what is some advice that you would give teachers, whether they're first year or veteran teachers who may be struggling?

3:30 SPEAKER_00: Um, we're at a great time at the beginning of a school year. Um, administrators are preparing, teachers are getting ready to come back in to get their classroom set up. But what is some advice that you would give teachers in order to help them build relationships and rapport with their classrooms, um, with their classroom students?

3:54 SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, and I agree that relationships and culture and climate are key to the success of any classroom. One of the things I often go to first when it comes to setting up um culture, clap culture and climate in the classroom and setting up a great environment for learning is establishing norms. Uh, back in the day when we used to think about making rules in the classroom, I remember creating you know five rules for my classroom before I even met students and posting that up on the bulletin board and kind of presenting the rules as students entered in and maybe even presenting the rules the first couple weeks of school, and I've never really talked about them again.

4:37 SPEAKER_01: Um, and I