Thrive Superstar Awards: Erica Valentin

Today’s article is on an awesome teacher at Thrive’s Juanita campus; Erica Valentin.

Erica Valentin is a Georgia-born military spouse with kids of her own, has been teaching for four years and is mostly passionate about instilling the idea that children should want to continue to learn forever. She became a teacher to primarily help her own brother who struggled in school despite tutoring and assistance from his teachers. It was only until she began to help him that he began to understand the material. That’s when she realized that her place was not in nursing which was her previous focus, but actually in teaching.

Ms. Erica wins the Thrive Superstar Award because unlike the teachers of many other inner-city schools, {at least the ones that I’ve had the opportunity to get to know} she is one of the many teachers at Thrive that are active educators in ways above and beyond the traditional teacher role.

At Thrive, she applies her love for teaching by focusing on academic progress as many other teachers do but with a twist; Thrive adopted the concept of social-emotional learning and project-based learning with a community mindset while also embracing creativity and individuality of the students. Teachers like Ms. Erica have taken that philosophy to heart and teach with these concepts in mind. In fact, when she first applied to the open teaching positions at Thrive, what appealed to her most was how well Thrive implemented these tactics and saw how different the environment was compared to the public schools she had previously worked at.

Ms. Erica starts her day by waking up at 5:30 AM {which would honestly rate the award for that alone in my book} because mind you, she has to get her own kids ready, take them to daycare and begin her day with preparing the back-to-back activities for the kids in her class. Once the children arrive, the fun starts...She can either be seen in the classroom teaching or on rotational duty with the other Thrive teachers as they prepare children for various learning activities and events. The class begins with a “Morning Message” where children adopt an inspirational quote/theme for the day, begin a sharing circle where the students speak about a topic of personal interest and then move on to whatever the plan for the day is. Students are free to learn about what interests them in their free learning time such as if a student is interested in the octopus, Ms. Erica searches for content of their interests and presents it to the students freely.

No matter where Ms. Erica is, she is sure to succeed in any environment due to the lessons she has passed on to the future generations she has helped mold but also because of the lessons that the students have taught her.

- Erica Valentin “Thrive is a place for students to be looked at as individuals. We give them tools to not only succeed academically but also with their interactions with others”.