Dear Dr. Feldman

My name is Sara Kosmicki.  I have been a teacher with Lincoln Public Schools for 20 years.  For the majority of those years, I taught 4th grade part-time.  This year I joined the ranks of full-time again as a 3rd, 4th, & 5th grade Math support teacher.  I love teaching Math, so this was a dream job.  Unfortunately, because of budget cuts, my dream has been short lived.  Next year, I will return to the classroom full-time. I am uncertain about what grade I will be teaching, but I am excited about this new chapter in my teaching career.  I completed my bachelors degree at UNL and never left.  I live with my husband, Devin and our 4 children.  Maggie, a college freshman, Sydney a high school sophomore, Cooper 4 yrs old, and Caiden 2 yrs old.  In the summer, we love to spend time at one of our area lakes tubing, skiing, and jet skiing. 

I do not consider myself very tech-savvy.  I can use email, facebook, search the internet, and use the programs available to us through our school district.  In our district, we use Mac computers and that is what we also use at home.  I was excited to receive my own laptop through the school district this year.  Right now, I am using it for basic purposes and to complete assignments for my online classes.  I would really like to learn how I can use it to better my classroom instruction.  In my classroom, I utilize a variety of different websites that reinforce concepts that students are learning.  I have recently acquired a projector and very simple camera that I can use to project worksheets on the board.  Because I don't use it all of the time, it can be a little bit time consuming to set up, as a result, I tend to resort back to overhead transparencies.  I believe that in order to teach the students that are growing up in our technological society we need to incorporate more technology in our classroom.  I am hoping that newer curriculum will automatically have in place ideas for using technology so that teachers are not having to create their own activities.

I chose to pursue my graduate degree at PSC because the way the program is set up and the time frame in which the classes are offered felt like a perfect fit for me.  The financial aid opportunities available also made it a program that I could afford.  I have been teaching for 20 years and have only taken classes that have been offered through staff development.  This program has helped me to really understand the trends and philosophies that we are seeing in education.  For so many years I feel like I did what I was told without really understanding "WHY".  Now I feel like I am much better informed and can use that information to better educate my students.