Hi! I am Tracee Potter one of the Pre-K teachers at Clyde Howell Early Childhood Center .  I graduated from the University of Tulsa with a BA in early childhood, special education, and elementary education and successfully completed my National Board Certification as a early childhood generalist in 2008. I have been teaching kindergarten or pre-K classes in public schools for 26 years. During this time I have found teaching in Early Childhood education to be an exciting and rewarding career. This year will be my fourth year at Clyde Howell after teaching seven years at Angie Debo Elementary. Before I came to Edmond I spent 3 years teaching in an inner city school in Shreveport, Louisiana and the preceding 13 years in Tulsa Public Schools. While at Angie Debo I was very proud and honored to represent them as Teacher of the Year during the 2000-01 school year. I love being at Clyde Howell where our whole emphasis is four and five year-olds.  I am confidant it is a great place for young children.

I have been happily married for 27 years and have been blessed with 3 sons, who are 19, 21 and 24 years old. My oldest son, Baron is attending Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas .   Duke, my middle son, is at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas.  My youngest son, Madison, will be attending Oklahoma Christian University.  We have a schnauzer dog named, Griffin, who is also a boy.  During my free time  I enjoy spending time with my family, working on my web site, and walking with my husband.

Philosophy Of Teaching

My teaching philosophy and style of teaching has been, and continues to be a work in progress.  My teaching style has changed from when I began 26 years ago, and I anticipate it will change again. As I seek and gain new insight about how children learn, my methods and philosophy have emerged into this very basic statement:

“I believe that all children can learn and can love doing it!  Every child has the need and right to be in a learning environment that supports, enhances, and develops their natural curiosity and a love for learning.  Children should feel safe, secure, challenged, excited, and successful.  Children learn in different ways and should have the opportunity to operate in their modality of choice some time each day.  The curriculum should be designed so that learning is meaningful and new information is linked to past learning and future expectations.”

     With those beliefs as my framework, I have established a goal of active learning for my students. To ensure active learning, I have arranged my classroom into learning centers with a variety of both commercial and teacher made materials which provide a challenge and learning opportunity for different developmental levels and learning styles across the curriculum.  These self-selected centers are set up in a way to encourage responsibility, decision-making, self-directed and cooperative learning.  Students take part in a daily plan-do-review process, which is a basic premise of the High Scope methodology.  This routine allows the children to express their intentions for work, carry them out, and then reflect on what they accomplished.  This method not only addresses different learning styles and developmental needs, it encourages responsibility and develops the important life skill of planning and assessing ones self.  Along with the time spent in self-selected work, my students also participate daily in large group activities where we sing, dance, and listen to stories. We also have “huddle” time, where a small group of students work with me and my assistant on targeted objectives through varied creative hands on activities.    This is not just random “fun”, it is a product of a well thought out and devised plan to match curriculum to our state priority academic skills and tie them with what they already know and what they need to learn.

     What goes on in the classroom is important, but equally important to the education of a young child is the relationship built between home and school.  Each year this relationship is established and built through many different avenues such as home visits, weekly newsletters, weekly individual reports through a “home and back” book, and student led conferences.  The student led conference is a time the parents come to school with their child and the child leads them through a variety of pre-selected stations that showcase the objectives met that nine weeks.  To complete the conference, parents write a reflection note back to their child about the conference. It is read to the child later during a time of celebration. 

         I have heard and believe that a teacher should be evaluated on what her students have learned and who they have become.  That is why at the end of every year my eyes swell with tears and my heart with pride as I watch my students walk out of my class self assured, able to think, make decisions, and with a love of learning, that I hope will last a lifetime.