About Me

My name is Hailie Roblyer, and I am planning to teach English at the secondary level. I also have a minor in Spanish, which is sort of my "other love." I have a little bit of experience teaching ESOL as a volunteer, and I immensely enjoyed my time working with Spanish-speaking adults who wanted to learn English, so that is sort of on my long-term-life-goal radar.  

I am passionate about spreading literacy and teaching kids to love reading to enhance their critical thinking skills (and, ultimately, to help them succeed in life), but when I'm not collecting young adult novels for my future classroom library, working, or studying through my finals semesters at GVSU, I partake in several other hobbies to help myself de-stress. 
I come from a very musical family. My mother and two of my brothers are music teachers, and while the rest of my family members haven't made a career of music, we all have bonded over playing instruments and singing together.  

I've also made such a hobby (read: obsession) of painting my nails that my husband decided to get me a UV light for Christmas last year. This allows me to get the shellac manicure at home without the shellac price! I also have a pet hedgehog named Spike (very original, I know, but it was my husband's idea) and a hamster named Millie. When we adopted Millie as a baby, we thought she was a male hamster due to some incorrect signage at the pet shop. After she grew up a little bit and it became obvious to us that she is indeed a female, my husband exclaimed, "We've been raising her as a boy all this time!" Here's a photo of my husband, Austin. He is pretty important to me - mostly because he provides the comic relief to my hectic schedule.

I have primarily used technology as a means to plan lessons, as opposed to using the technology itself in my lessons. I have used databases to search for topical ideas that previous teachers had that were similar to what I planned to tackle. I've also used Pinterest for decorating bulletin boards to become inspired, since I am not very skilled in the art of making crafts. 

I tutored at Hudsonville High School in Hudsonville, Michigan for a short time in preparation for my application to the College of Education at Grand Valley. My primary responsibility there was to help students use a credit recovery software program on computers, but the process was very simple for the kids; in fact, by the time I began volunteering at the school, the students had already been using the program for about a month and were far more knowledgeable about how to use it than I was.
  
My greatest and most in-depth teaching experience so far has been my volunteer ESOL position at an organization called Roosevelt Park Ministries in downtown Grand Rapids, and my resources there consisted of: 1 classroom, 1 whiteboard, 2 tables and sets of chairs, and a functioning light fixture in the ceiling. I had to get creative to still plan and execute lessons that incorporated the concepts I wanted to teach, but I did almost everything with no technology whatsoever. I did, however, bring my laptop into the room. For lack of a projector or way to make my little screen any bigger, I used my body as a makeshift TV stand; whenever I wanted to show a video, I held the computer in the air and stood at the front of the room. For this reason, and because the high school I graduated from did not have a lot of it, I have very little experience using technology as a teacher.