About Shay Van der Mey

In 2001, I began coaching and working with children in recreational and school environments after moving from Albuquerque to Phoenix. Throughout these experiences, I found a love of teaching and wanted to continue to inspire children. In order to continue my desire to make a positive impact on the children I interacted with, I began taking classes to be a teacher. I graduated in 2004 with my Bachelor's Degree and began my first position as a 1st grade teacher. Two years later, I was able to move into a 6th grade position as my principal knew my true passion was with children at that age. Throughout my years teaching 6th grade, I knew how important it was to influence these children to become lifelong learners and readers and completed my Master's in Curriculum and Instruction in Reading in the summer of 2010. My professional development and education over the years has focused on SIOP, Backward Design Planning, ELL instruction in self-contained and multi-age classrooms, cooperative learning, curriculum planning, Thinking Maps, guided reading instruction, and robust vocabulary instruction. Now being back in my hometown of Albuquerque and teaching at Alice King, I will use my previous experiences and collaborate with my colleagues and parents to ensure the success of the students here at our school.