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NAME:
Laurel Ann Madden
SCHOOL:
St. Ambrose of Woodbury Catholic School
CLASS:
Kindergarten (Room #123)
SCHOOL PHONE:
651-768-3042
Greetings! My name is Laurel Madden and I am beginning my 7th year teaching
full day kindergarten at St. Ambrose of Woodbury Catholic School. Teaching
is my passion and I truly love working with the kinder kids! There is
something magical about the "wonder year" of kindergarten. I enjoy leading
five and six-year-olds on a learning journey; helping them make discoveries
about themselves and the world around them.
I have a B.A. in Journalism (1981) and a B.A. in Elementary Education (2002)
from the College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, MN. I spent over 15 years
working in the public relations field before entering the world of
teaching kindergarten. Teaching is my job, but it also overlaps as a hobby!
I spend a lot of time reading about new teaching methods and searching for
ways to make my instruction more meaningful and exciting for my students.
I live in Stillwater, MN with my husband Mike and my 16-year-old son (Dan)
and my 20-year-old daughter (Kelly). Dan is a sophomore at Stillwater High
School and Kelly attends the University of Wisconsin - Stout. When I am not
at school, I enjoy reading and working on various home improvement
projects.
If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, just e-mail me at school.
Be sure to stop by this website often to learn more about the wonderful
world of kindergarten!
My mission is to make a difference in the lives of my students by making
learning so engaging and fun that they will want to learn something new each
day. I hope to plant the seed of life-long learning in all those I am
privileged to teach!
I believe that an effective kindergarten program nurtures the development of
students’ literacy abilities that will have begun long before they come into
the classroom and will continue long after they leave. I understand that
some children arrive in the kindergarten classroom with their literacy
abilities well advanced, while others enter with very limited abilities. My
goal is to pick students up at their varied stages of literacy development
and promote growth in their reading and writing skills without stress but
with appropriate challenges. Specifically, I believe the purpose of
kindergarten is to provide an environment in which students will come to
know (according to their own timetables and in their own ways) about the
world, about literacy, and about how to act socially.
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
-- William Butler Yeats, Irish Poet and Dramatist
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