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| Hi and welcome
to my classroom web site! I am currently teaching fourth
graders at Tom McCall Elementary School in Redmond, Oregon. I have
lived in Redmond since 1992, and this is my 32nd year of teaching.
I enjoy teaching children and my greatest satisfaction is seeing
students succeed and watching them develop a love of learning. In
Redmond I taught at Tumalo
School for three years, Vern Patrick Elementary School for 11 years,
then at
Tom McCall Elementary,
where this is my sixth year teaching in the "Desert Wing." I have a wonderful, supportive family, who all live within 20 miles of me, so I feel very fortunate. My mom is a retired teacher who taught kindergarten and first grade for her entire career. She teaches artist lessons to our fourth grade students. My dad was born in Scotland and is a retired mechanical engineer. I have an older brother, and younger sister who also live in Redmond. My husband works for the State of Oregon and our daughter is a junior at Oregon State University where she studies Exercise and Sport Science to become a physical therapist. We have Golden Retriever named Duffy and a yellow tabby cat named Pooh who live with us on our 10 acre farm. I have lived in Oregon for all but my first year of life. I am a dual citizen of the U.S. and Great Britain. I grew up in the Beaverton and Hillsboro areas and attended high school in Hillsboro. I was fortunate to be able to spend my sophomore year studying in England. I graduated from Hillsboro Senior High in 1976. In 1980 I graduated with high scholarship from Oregon State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education, a minor in Language Arts, and a Reading Endorsement. I received my Master of Arts in Teaching in 1990 from Lewis & Clark College and also earned a Math Endorsement from George Fox College. At some point or other, I have attended nearly every college and university in Oregon, taking classes and learning new things which benefit my students. I love teaching and will probably never stop taking classes and learning new things! My teaching career began in Brownsville, Oregon where I taught first grade. After that I moved to Gresham, Oregon and taught at West Gresham Elementary and Gordon Russell Middle School. I taught fifth grade, a four/five blend, a five/six blend, and seventh and eighth grade math including basic and general math, pre-algebra, and algebra. Since 1992, I have been teaching in Redmond at Tumalo Elementary, Vern Patrick Elementary, and at Tom McCall Elementary. In Redmond, I've taught four/five blends, five/six blends, and fourth grade. I am proud to receive recognition for the work I do as an educator. I was very proud to receive the Redmond Wal-Mart 2003 Teacher of the Year Award. Some of my students and their families nominated me for the award. I received a check for $1,000 which was spent in my classroom to improve our access to technology. I was also selected in 2004 as a JASON XV "Rainforests at the Crossroads" Teacher Argonaut. The JASON Project is Dr. Bob Ballard's program to connect his work with students around the world. Dr. Ballard is the scientist and oceanographer who discovered the wreck of the RMS Titanic in 1986. I traveled on expedition for two weeks to Panama with Student Argonauts from around the world. While there, we conducted scientific research on Barro Colorado Island, an island in the Panama Canal waterway and home of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Our work was televised live through tele-presence for classrooms all over the world and also on the National Geographic Channel. The JASON Project is the education's premier real-time science teaching and learning program. Another incredible honor was receiving the Microsoft W orldwide Innovative Teachers Award. Twelve teachers from theThe most incredible recognition of my career came in May 2006 when I was chosen as a 2006 Disney Teacher Award Honoree. Disney awarded 44 United States teachers out of 75,000 nominations for this honor. Being chosen one of two Oregon teachers to attend the 2010 Mount Vernon Teacher Institute was an amazing honor. I spent a week living on the grounds of Mount Vernon, learning all about the life and times of George Washington and his importance in our country's history. The math lesson (area and perimeter) I wrote about George Washington's garden was chosen the elementary lesson plan of our institute week and is now featured on the Mount Vernon Website. My George Washington web page has lessons I wrote plus links and photos of the trip. This September 2011, middle school principal Mike Roberts published a book that I am honored to be included as the Chapter 8 teacher. It is called One-on-One Conversations with America's most Inspiring Teachers: Conversations on the Art of Teaching, Volume 1. He also has a Blog Spot about the book. My interests outside of school include spending time with my family, traveling, learning more about computers, climbing and hiking, camping, boating, raising golden retrievers since 1984, reading, and sewing. I enjoy working on my website to make it a useful resource for my students, parents, and fellow teachers. I enjoy building websites. One of the favorite websites that I built is my dad's Scottish Heritage web site. At age 85, my dad maintains his website all by himself. I love to learn new things. My Favorites:
Thanks for stopping by my web site! ~ Heather Renz ~
"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." -- Albert Einstein
High school friends - yearbook page. I'm in the second row, middle. |
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