Maryanne Keim

I've been in education for over 30 years, and it's truly been my calling. I was a foster child, and my foster mother was a teacher and a wonderful woman who served as a very strong role model for me. She inspired me to want to teach. Another teacher talked me out of it initially, and I went into social work, but I was never comfortable. I was still always working around children, so I thought, to heck with this, I'm just gonna go into teaching. I went back to my first love and never looked back. Most recently, I worked with high school students in special education for four years, teaching learning support ELA. The kids would always come back to me, which made me feel really good because at least I must have been doing something right. I worked with a diverse group - a lot of them were emotional support, some were transitioning back in from juvenile hall, and I also had autistic children. I never knew day to day what was gonna happen, so I took it with an open mind and an open plate. My approach was to present the lesson with modifications, go slow, and work with each student's needs. Sometimes we'd have to stop and talk about a fight they were involved in or saw, to let them vent and get it out, because they're not going to concentrate until they get it out. My job was literally to prepare them year after year and build on it till they got to the 12th grade teacher, especially for the capstone writing they'd need to do.