Local.

Our city. Our community. Our learners.

Hi, I’m Mona. My quest is to create a space where we can learn together, grow, and support the growth of our local village. My mission is to help you engage your students and kids to create meaningful learning experiences in and out of the classroom.

I’ve been teaching since 2008, but I’ve always known I would be a teacher. My first memory of teaching was at 5 years old after returning from kindergarten. I had my books set up on the window sill and my baby dolls neatly lined up in rows. I made sure each doll saw every picture and after that I never questioned it… I was going to be a teacher.

When I graduated college in Michigan (Fire Up Chips!) with my teaching degree in 2008, I moved to Chicago to work in an inner city school. I felt unexplainably pulled to the big city. Honestly, after my first month I was really questioning what the hell I had done. By the end of the year, I had fallen in love. In love with Chicago, the students, families, and teaching. I fell in love with figuring out how to give students opportunities to rise to the challenge and surprise themselves by accomplishing more than they ever thought possible.

In 2015, I was awarded the Chicago Foundation for Education Teacher of the Year award for my work in teaching 3rd grade. I reflected a lot that year as I worked through my National Board Certification work and conducted Action Research through the ARLI fellowship. This opened my eyes to the fact that I was doing something uncommon. Most teachers struggle to balance rigorous curriculum, character education, and creating highly motivating learning opportunities while helping students achieve standards.

In the last 5 years I’ve moved to 5th & 6th grade to teach social studies for two years, then moved to teaching 5th & 6th grade math. What hasn’t changed is my commitment to developing highly engaging & rigorous curriculum and fostering character development in each student.

My teaching practice utilizes every opportunity to allow students to make their own meaning of the world through hands on experiences, student led discourse, and goal setting through self reflections.