Welcome from your July Mentor

My name is Rosie Riordan and I live and teach in Kansas. I have been active in my state organization and at the regional and national level. I began my teaching career in the early 80's and have taught at every level from preschool to high school. I currently am the dept. chair at Shawnee Mission West high school where I teach everything from Art Studio intro to AP art to jewelry, drawing and sculpture.

As a kid I always wanted to be a teacher. I was part of a special program in the 80's called teacher corp where I taught in the inner city during the day and worked on my masters at night. It was  a grueling 2 years program but gave me experience across the board where I fell in love with igniting the passion for creativity in kids.

Everyday I wake up and celebrate the fact that I love my job and really enjoy my students. Each day is a new challenge and a new experience. Kids deserve to have teachers who love what they do and love teaching. We want to develop life loving learners.

As we journey into the future we have been challenged by NCLB which is basically teaching children not to think. Our job becomes more critical as we help children become active problem solvers, creative thinkers and risk takers. We make it okay to have multiple solutions to every problem we present. We help our students use their minds and expand their creativity by giving them permission to take a risks and not be afraid to fail. I tell my students they can make a million mistakes but work to learn something from them. No one is perfect and we can learn as much from our mistakes as we can from our successes. Our job becomes so important as the way for students to develop and use those 21st century skills.

-Rosie Riordan