Michelle was born to two Mexican immigrants Ruben and Maria Martin. Her father was a contracted bracero (“crop picker”) who later became the owner of his own Painting Company. Growing-up Michelle knew she would 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. She would pay her friends to play school even on weekends! Michelle began teaching Prekindergarten in 2002 and passionately loved this experience, which honored her with district teacher of the year in 2005-2006! Later on she became an assistant principal of a new Prekindergarten campus and was able to put in place a teacher academy where teachers shared best practices, modeled lessons, and were trained on how to create intentional hands-on lessons. She feels this experience is what motivated her to continue doing the work she does now. Michelle continued to serve in other leadership positions such as principal and director of Family Community Empowerment and Multilingual; nevertheless she kept coming back to her love for primary students and teachers. She fell in love with serving others especially those that were in need like her brother. 

It was during her doctoral experience that she met a superintendent by the name of Dr. Jerry Gibson, who became a great friend and mentor. She managed to get him to observe her Prekindergarten students and he was blown away by the engagement, rigorous, and meaningful learning experiences! Dr. Jerry then asked Michelle to help him at his Prekindergarten campus and the Learning By Doing A Child’s Way was not only born but it became Michelle’s research project for her doctorate.

The lessons created are rooted in both Montessori theory and Emergent Bilingual (EB) best practices. Additionally, Michelle researched and implemented many strategies for oral and language development as her youngest bilingual child has a speech impediment. Therefore, you will find that the lessons align with best practices with respect to preserving  the mother tongue while acquiring a second language. 

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 the concept of “isolating the difficulty.” Isolating the difficulty consists of removing unnecessary challenges so that students can focus on the actual learning  target.   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. Start with simple concepts and gradually introduce more complex, not vice versa. See the difference below: