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Lauren Pittman is a special education teacher with 12 years\u2019 experience working with students with exceptionalities.\u00a0 She is a graduate of Berry College in Rome, GA and holds a degree in Early Childhood Education and certifications in general special education and adaptive special education as well as an ESOL and math endorsement.<\/p>\n
Lauren is currently completing her Master of Education degree with a concentration in Special Education \u2013 High Incidence at Vanderbilt University.<\/p>\n
For the last 12 years, she has been working and as a special education teacher and for the last 5 years was the department head for special education at Holly Springs Elementary School in Canton, GA.\u00a0 Lauren holds technology certifications through Microsoft including being a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert, Surface Team Expert, Microsoft Fellow and Surface Classroom Champion.\u00a0 Lauren also holds the distinction in her district as having a Microsoft Certified Classroom.<\/p>\n
As a champion for accessibility and inclusion in today\u2019s classrooms, Lauren travels around the country presenting at schools and conferences on the importance of inclusion and how to leverage technology to meet student needs.\u00a0 Her work has been featured in articles for the Washington Post, Ed Tech Magazine, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Good Housekeeping, the Microsoft Education blog and other national recognized publications.\u00a0 Her work with Microsoft Education\u2019s OneNote and Learning Tools was featured in a world-wide media campaign championing the need and use of the Immersive Reader for students with dyslexia.\u00a0 Her story was shared at Microsoft Education\u2019s 2016 Hack-the-Classroom event in Redmond Washington and she has worked closely with the company to create training videos and content to help teachers make their classrooms more inclusive.<\/p>\n
Someone once asked me this question, \u201cwhy do you teach?\u00a0 You\u2019ll never make any money.\u201d Teaching is a profession that isn\u2019t going to bring you fame or fortune, you won\u2019t be on the cover of magazines or on talk shows and it won\u2019t bring you notoriety or status.\u00a0 Your profession is not measured in dollars on a paycheck or Christmas bonuses, but knowing that you are affecting the lives of children.\u00a0 It\u2019s measured in smiles when they walk through the door in the morning and hugs at the end of the day.\u00a0 It\u2019s in receiving thank you notes and I love you letters on scraps of notebook paper.\u00a0 It\u2019s in their parent\u2019s faces and the tears of appreciation that run down their cheeks when you tell them their child did learn how to read.\u00a0 Success as a teacher isn\u2019t measured in the tangible, but in the feelings and without those, being a teacher just wouldn\u2019t be as much fun.\u00a0 When you look in the troubled face of a young child and you feel their trouble with reading, you know without a doubt that you will do anything and everything to help them succeed.\u00a0 You will cry with them through the frustration, you will brush off their disappointment when they fail, and you will yell and scream at the top of your lungs when they succeed.\u00a0 Teaching is all about how you answer this question,\u201d what will you do?\u201d and my answer is \u201cwhatever it takes.\u201d\u00a0 Your students are your heart, your purpose and your passion and their success is your reward.\u00a0 At the end of the year when they bring you a potted plant and in their tiny handwriting it says, \u201cThank you Mrs. Pittman for helping me grow,\u201d you know you\u2019ve scored the game winning touchdown.\u00a0 When the student who could barely read a kindergarten level book, comes to you to tell you all about the novel they just finished, you know you scored that magazine cover.\u00a0 When the little one who wouldn\u2019t let anyone love them runs up to you and gives you a giant bear hug, that\u2019s your Christmas bonus.\u00a0 Teaching cannot be measured in test scores and aptitude tests, it\u2019s measured in the faces that you see every day.\u00a0 It\u2019s measured in their success and knowing that you were part of the reason they made it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lauren Pittman is a special education teacher with 12 years\u2019 experience working with students with exceptionalities.\u00a0 She is a graduate of Berry College in Rome, GA and holds a degree in Early Childhood Education and certifications in general special education and adaptive special education as well as an ESOL and math endorsement. Lauren is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1985,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/spedteacherresources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/spedteacherresources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/spedteacherresources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/spedteacherresources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1985"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/spedteacherresources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/spedteacherresources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1098,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/spedteacherresources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4\/revisions\/1098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/spedteacherresources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/spedteacherresources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}