Where Mr Memfern Grows

I began teaching right out of college. I moved with my teacher wife (you can imagine our dinner conversations) from suburban Chicago to Memphis where we both took jobs in urban education. We love our schools and have been here going on 10 years. I started teaching second graders but found I prefered attitudes to tears so I moved up to 5th grade and haven't looked back.

My favorite aspect of teaching is finding solutions to problems. I am driven by personal reflection and often can't drop something until I find my solution (again, ask my wife about those dinner conversations). I was inspired by Doug Lomov's "Reading Reconsidered" to build a set of texts in my class that all students would read to build a shared experience. These texts had to be challenging, interesting, and, most importantly to me, build excitement around reading. Without a library at our school I am in charge of making sure my students have independent reading material, but monitoring their book choices let alone making sure they were completing reading was a nightmare. That is when I began creating and implement my independent reading comprehension guides for students. As they read a book independently, they fill in comprehension questions and then I know they are prepared to participate in class and small group discussions. This strategy helps students stay engaged while reading and feel success as they read. Using these resources has been a game changer as I have watched AR points, quiz scores, test results and most importantly love of and interest in reading all take off since the implementation of these resources.

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Bachelors in English and Creative Writing at the University of Illinois. Masters in Education at Christian Brothers University.

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