Our DCP teacher implements important safety drills to keep our children safe. Learn more about this week's Staff Spotlight, Denisse Martinez.
This is Ms. Denisse first full year as a teacher, but she's been working at DCP for three years, of which she spent 2.5 years working as a work study and the other half as a teacher when the opportunity was presented to her to teach.
She graduated in December 2017 with an Emergency Administration and Planning degree from UNT. Because of her background knowledge, she spent this summer putting together much-needed emergency backpacks that each teacher must have in their classrooms in case an emergency arises, wrote the lockdown drill and revamped the fire drill protocols in place from which our children practiced at the beginning of October.
How was the transition from emergency planning to education? Well, Ms. Denisse said it was challenging at first coming into the second half of the year and teaching under a difficult curriculum, however, she helped plan and add components to the new curriculum implemented at the beginning of this school year. Ms. Denisse put together curriculum binders under the new curriculum with Educational First Steps that will hopefully lead to accreditation through NAC, The National Accreditation Commission for Early Childhood Education by next spring.
"Because of the new curriculum, I have more freedom to do a lot more and add things around our themes for each week v.s. the curriculum we had last year," Ms. Denisse said. "Working here definitely gives me the opportunity to encourage the growth and development of young minds."
As mentioned before, Ms. Denisse was a work-study for two years at DCP. She saw the need to give the work-study students structure so they're productive and a great help to the teachers assisting in the classrooms. As a result, she developed the training program for future work-study students that includes a year-long project to ensure they get the most out of their work-study year.
Ms. Denisse is the mom of two guinea pigs, Ari and Ginger and a cat named Abbie. In her free time, she likes to walk around her block, read a great book about jewelry or history and enjoys eating Asian food.