Mrs. McGowan's First Grade: Meet Mrs. McGowan

Meet Mrs. Mc Gowan
H. W. Mountz Elementary School
Spring Lake, NJ

my picture.jpg (2373 bytes) In September 2008, I'll be starting my 15th year at H. W. Mountz Elementary School. All but one of those years has been teaching first grade. There's so much to learn together (Teaching Philosophy) and I'm looking forward to another wonderful year in Room 104!

Previously, I directed a church-based preschool. During that time, I was enrolled in a Masters program at Rutgers University. It's also the time when I started to learn how to use a computer!

Back-tracking even more, my first career was in nursing. On becoming a registered nurse (St. Vincents Medical Center School of Nursing, NYC), I worked part time in hospitals while getting my BA degree in sociology. I took a year off to learn community health nursing with the NYC Department of Health. Subsequently, I worked for our local Visiting Nurse Association for a few years. It was during this time that the teaching "bug" took hold. Community health nurses do lots of teaching!

Several years, one hubby, and four sons later, I found myself in a friend's preschool "helping out". I also volunteered in two Kindergarten classrooms and had a close up view of what good teachers do. So back to school I went, this time to become an elementary teacher.

I was fortunate to be a student at Rutgers Graduate School of Education where so much early childhood and reading research is conducted. Thanks to Carol Weinstein, Lesley Morrow, and Dorothy Strickland for inspiring excellence in my work! I did my student teaching in a wonderful third grade classroom with a talented and generous model teacher, Karen Jordan.

Our home is quiet now, but the boys still call home every weekend. Kevin, Carolyn, Matthew and Molly live in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area and Dan, Rebecca, Brannon and Grayson live near Denver, Colorado. Chris, Dawn, Maddie and Chloe are near us here in N.J., and Nicole is starting college in September! Dave and Veronica live in Florida and my students hear lots about his work with sharks and rays during the year. My husband, Chris, works in adult education.

I enjoy working on the website, hosting Internet projects, reading Jane Austen books over and over again, and I'm fascinated with Civil War family stories. Most of all, I love helping children become readers and love books as much as I do!

Marci McGowan, Ed. M
Early Childhood/Elementary Education

Continue to: Teaching Philosophy

McGowan, M. (2005). My Internet projects and other online resources for the literacy classroom. In R. A. Karchmer, M. H. Mallette, J. Kara-Soteriou & D. J. Leu, Jr. (Eds.), Innovative Approaches to Literacy Education: Using the Internet to Support New Literacies (pp 85-102). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

McGowan, M. (2005). New literacies in my classroom! In D. J. Leu, Jr., D.D. Leu & J. Coiro, Teaching with the Internet K-12: New Literacies for New Times (4th ed., pp 34-35). Norwood, Ma: Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc.

McGowan, M. (2005). Mrs. McGowan's first grade website. In R.C. Forcier & D.E. Descy, The Computer as an Educational Tool : Productivity and Problem Solving (4th ed., pp 364-365). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

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Marci McGowan

Teaching Philosophy

The essence of teaching is creating meaningful learning experiences for children. Educational programs should be centered around the child, emphasizing:

Conceptual learning that leads to understanding along with acquisition of basic skills.

A balanced literacy program with curriculum content integrated across traditional subject categories, especially for communication skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

Children's active participation in learning: they should be able to move around the classroom, talk with their peers, and make choices about doing activities that have personal interest to them.

Cooperative and collaborative learning activities that foster social skills, skill acquisition, and concept development.

Curriculum content and teaching strategies that consider the age span of children, individual differences in learning styles, diverse backgrounds, and cultural differences.

Flexible grouping for instruction in a specific skill area: temporary, homogeneous grouping that reflects a student's individual variation in learning.

The regular use of technology, especially computers, integrated throughout the curriculum.

Varied evaluation techniques employed for ongoing assessment of student progress; assessment utilized as basis for future planning of instruction.

A variety of resources are utilized to accomplish this: our own classroom community, hands-on activities, parent connections, collaboration with staff members and other teachers, community resources, and my own continuing education.