Michelle was born to two Mexican immigrants Ruben and Maria Martin. Her father was first a bracero (“crop picker”) and later became the owner of his own Painting Company. Growing-up Michelle knew she’d always be a teacher and this was confirmed when her younger brother was diagnosed with Leukemia. She was determined that he would not fall behind, so she brought home all the materials and taught lessons to her brother while at the hospital and later at home. Her father even built her a club house so she could teach the neighborhood kids. Michelle married at 21, had a child at 22, and was divorced. Nevertheless, with the support of her family she continued her studies in becoming a Bilingual teacher and in 2002 she graduated was on her way to teaching. Then in 2003 she accepted the challenge of being Montessori Certified; which to her this was lifechanging! She strongly feels that the work she does always takes her back to the Montessori practice.
Four years later her passion for serving children grants her the honor of being named Aldine’s 2005-2006 Elementary/Intermediate Teacher of the Year. A year later, she is awarded a scholarship to obtain her masters in leadership from the University of Sam Houston. Michelle continued her work in the field of education serving as an Assistant Principal and Principal. She later was given more opportunities to serve as a Multilingual Specialist, Family and Community Empowerment Director, and Bilingual/ESL Director for other school districts.
She has served in the field of education for over 18 years. She currently is working on pursuing her dream by implementing the Learning By Doing Program A Child’s Way in various school districts. The curriculum created is a fusion of Montessori theory and English Learner (EL) best practices. Additionally, Michelle researched many strategies for oral language development as her youngest child has a speech impediment. Therefore, the lessons and letter introduction also took into consideration the process of acquiring language and letter sound formation.
Michelle and her kids being English Language learners themselves, also took into account the process of acquiring a second language into the development of the Bilingual curriculum and the Mathematical Guide. Since Spanish is different than the English language especially since Spanish is a syllabic language and English is not, Michelle knows herself that bilingual Spanish-speaking students learn language very differently than native English speakers.
Aside from EL strategies, there are three keys to the process for creating lessons. The first is that there is intentional repetition which also provides “isolation of difficulty”. The second is, that lessons support and build on each other which allows for flexible grouping and personalization, and lastly is that all the lessons include and emphasize to the concept of “isolating the difficulty” or removing unnecessary challenges so that students can focus on the actual target to be learned. For example, if you are teaching shapes to students it is important to know that the target is to learn the name of shapes and attributes; and therefore, you should “isolate the difficulty”. Isolating the difficulty does NOT mean you never provide lessons with difficulty and rigor, it means that when you introduce a new concept you should take into account “isolating the difficulty”, once the target is mastered you can introduce concepts such as Example A. See the difference below:
