Debbie Hochberg

My name is Deborah Hochberg, and I am a retired public school teacher of 34 years. I taught kindergarten, second, and fourth grades as well as served as president of the Teachers Union the last year before my retirement in 2008. I decided to get involved with TPT to continue my learning. Being a veteran teacher all materials that were used in my classroom were teacher generated and in a hard copy format. Now, I am learning how to take these ideas, enhance them and put them in a format on WORD which in and of itself is a learning experience for me. There is a multitude of ideas on this site, many of which I could have utilized in my classroom. I feel that my own personal experiences and my wonderful colleagues made me the teacher that I was. As a mentor in my retirement, I try to bring this knowledge to new and veteran teachers. I am trying to be unique with my materials. I want them to be more than a group of worksheets to be copied. In every product that I have created, I not only include ideas and strategies but ways these materials can be adapted for teachers' needs and ownership. As one of the first schools in Oneida County to adopt a full day of kindergarten, I was instrumental initiating its details and its implementation in the mid 1980s. As an advocate for other districts, our kindergarten department created a network of fellow kindergarten teachers which exchanged ideas and strategies biannually. We targeted different approaches within the curriculum and offered support for our fellow colleagues. After retiring, I had a desire to continue learning and teaching. I began working in the Oneida Madison BOCES to mentor kindergarten teachers in the Utica School district with differentiated instruction. I found I was still motivated to be in the classroom, inquire about new teaching methods and create fresh learning solutions, as well as provide formative evaluations of teachers. Being a teacher was more than what I chose to do for a living, it was my passion, who I was and who I continue to be today. My passion continues to be nurturing, and inspiring children for greatness and mentoring fellow teachers to find solutions that position them for success with new innovative ways to reach their students.

I am a hands on teacher who modeled enthusiasm and curiosity to motivate my students. I encouraged them to be resourceful and independent while emphasizing the development of their thinking process by providing them the tools they needed to achieve success. My room was always Center-oriented. I strived to create an environment that was conducive to the needs of all my students. Each area of curriculum content had open-ended Activities Center to meet the necessities of all learners. With each year of teaching, I chose an area of curriculum and rebuilt it. I felt it was paramount to make my program better than the previous year and continue to add value to my students, my district, and challenge myself as well. New ideas included: creating, implementing, and training parents with workshops how to teach emerging readers, producing a booklet of activities that met the math requirements for every standard and was a pioneer in forming a journaling program that used phonetics and inventive spelling for students to write simple stories and sentences.

I was honored to be the commencement speaker for graduating class of 2007 in the district where I taught.

B.A. State University of New York At Oswego, Elementary Education, 1974

Math Curriculum Committee for K-12 (1998-2008) Westmoreland Teachers Union President (2007-2008)