I am an AACPS:<\/strong> Science Teacher, Severna Park Middle School<\/em> | 2017 Teacher of the Year Nominee<\/strong><\/p>\n People arrive at their destination based on a compilation of all their experiences in life. While my resume may speak to my collaborations and pursuit of perfecting my craft, I would not be who I am without you knowing that it was a combination of personal and professional endeavors that made it evident that the profession of teaching is my purpose. I was adopted at birth and have grown up with the philosophy that I am lucky to be here and that God had a reason that I was. I always loved Science in school, and thought I would go into the research or health care profession. I am the first child in my family to go to college and luck, and lack of money, initially got me in the classroom as a substitute teacher to pay for college. I immediately chose my major, graduated with honors, and taught at Folger for two years. Something was pulling me back to pursuit of the health care industry, so I returned to college to study medicine, but with a family, had to work as well. I was hired as the first female Industrial Salesperson at Tate Andale and loved traveling the country working with engineers. I became their number one salesperson, and I loved my work, but traveling was too difficult with a family. The decision to return to teaching and focus in Science actually seemed almost like my destiny. I don\u2019t know why former AACPS Interim Superintendent (2005-2006) Nancy Mann remembered observing me, but she walked my application to HR and I was hired at SPMS the following week for the upcoming school year. Without leaving teaching, I would not have as much real world scientific knowledge or such a sense of belonging in the classroom. That passion led me to pursue every program possible to acquire more effective teaching practices and increased first-hand collaboration with scientists in the real world to bring back these wonderful opportunities to enhance student experiences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “My passion for science led me to pursue every program possible to acquire more effective teaching practices and increased first-hand collaboration with scientists in the real world to bring back these wonderful opportunities to enhance student experiences.”–Debbie Sparby, SPMS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001013,"featured_media":13537,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_expiration-date-status":"saved","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,132,146],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aacps_story","category-employee_stories","category-severna_park_stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001013"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13534"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13536,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13534\/revisions\/13536"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}