A Clover Park School District story.
Our Clover Park School District Staff Spotlight this week features Meriwether Elementary School kindergarten teacher Sheila Williams.
This is Sheila’s third year teaching at Meriwether after moving around the country with her spouse who serves in the military. “We have such a great community here and these are the best kids I’ve ever worked with,” she said.
Sheila chose to become an educator after her experience with a childhood friend left a lasting impact. “I had a friend in eighth grade who couldn’t read and dropped out of school,” she said. “No one seemed to care, and I remember thinking, ‘we can do better than that.’ It’s why I like teaching at lower levels, to make sure every student has those fundamental skills.”
In her first two years at Meriwether, Sheila taught second and third grade, but she was happy to move to kindergarten this year. “It’s fun to see the milestones students have every day,” she said. “It really hit me during conferences when I saw students who were nervous on the first day showing their parents around the school and making so much progress.”
In addition to the fundamental academic skills Sheila teaches her students, she hopes to instill an instinct for self-advocacy. “I want my students to feel like they can move through the world with respect for other people and speak up for themselves if they ever feel like their own boundaries have been crossed,” she said.
