1. By Carmen M. Rivera EDU 650 Teaching, Learning and Leading in the 21 st Century Instructor: Dr, Eileen Dial Ashford University July 14, 2014

2. Who I am… I’m Carmen M. Rivera. Graduated from Inter-American University of P.R. (1985) Criminal Justice Liberal Arts Degree I’m from Puerto Rico. I live in Hartford CT I’m a Preschool Teacher in a non-profit organization: Community Renewal Team (CRT) in Hartford, CT

3. Type of school I attended as a child As a child I attended the public school system..

4. What experience during my time in school had a lasting impact on my life? During my time in the public school the experience that impacted my life was meeting a special person, my 5 th grade teacher Mrs. Falcon. She had Parkinson’s Disease, she loved to wear many bangles that sounded like little bells according how her body moved. When she wanted the attention of one student who was not paying attention to the class she raised her arms for the bangles to make noise and the student knew what that meant… I now understand that she used her bangles as classroom management.

5. Another thing that had an impact on me was the resources used in 70’s in my school, the tools the teachers used such as the projector where the teachers wrote in a paper the discussion for the class and on the wall of the classroom was reflected, other tool was the printer machine that did not use electricity. It was manual. The teacher needed to fill the little bottle in the machine with ink and after she hand wrote the information in the stencil paper, she had to put the stencil paper and manually moved the handle of the printed machine and make the copies one by one.

6. Type of position I hope to have in the future. The position I hope to have in the future is the Education Program Coordinator, in order to help other teachers promote the success of all students.

7. How I feel a master’s degree will help me in my future role(s) A master's degree is necessary for career advancement opportunities. As a professional, a master's degree can open to me many career doors.

8. Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world. - Nelson Mandela The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character that is the goal of education. - Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes