M.Ed. with 15 years of K–8 teaching — patient, structured, and st

Jami A.

I hold a Master of Education from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, along with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and I spent fifteen years as a licensed classroom teacher. My teaching career spanned kindergarten through eighth grade: I taught kindergarten and second grade in the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, then moved to Idaho, where I taught fourth and fifth grade at a STEM academy for five years before finishing my classroom career teaching middle school math, a hands-on maker lab, and a life skills course.

Because I’ve taught across such a wide age range, I’m comfortable meeting a student wherever they are. With younger students, I focus on building confidence and making the work feel manageable — breaking a skill into small pieces and letting them experience success early. With older students, I spend more time on the reasoning behind a concept, because middle schoolers who understand why something works stop needing to memorize their way through it. I wrote my own curriculum for most of my years in the classroom, which means I’m used to designing instruction around a specific learner rather than following a script.

My approach in a session is to start by figuring out where the actual gap is, since the topic a student is struggling with often isn’t where the confusion began. From there we work through problems together, with me asking questions rather than supplying answers, so the student builds the ability to get unstuck on their own. I also served on my school’s leadership committee and on the team that earned our school national STEM certification, and I hold certifications in personal training and nutrition, which I’m glad to bring into health and wellness topics as well.