Only 4 years into her teaching career, Ms. Raena Bermudes manifests what exemplary teachers have in common, a passion for teaching and a genuine care for students. She takes to heart the responsibility that she’s entrusted in shaping children’s lives. She’s invested in our students and continues to go beyond expectation by continuously reflecting her teaching practices to ensure that she is meeting every student’s needs. Not only does she impart academic knowledge to her students, she also imparts valuable teaching tools and skills for future teachers as a mentor teacher for the NMC School of Education, Student Teacher Program. Ms. Bermudes is approachable, open to ideas, and willing to share her experience and strategies with other teachers. She is a team player that sees the optimism of every challenge she faces with her students, colleagues and parents.
As you walk into Ms. Bermudes’ classroom, you can’t help but notice how warm and inviting it is. The walls are surrounded with student work and art! With the smiles on the children’s faces as they engage in their work, clearly they have ownership in their classroom empowering them in their learning. Because she believes that parental involvement is critical to student success, she establishes open communication with her parents and engages them to participate in their student’s learning through family projects, class skits or plays, educational excursion experiences and parent workshops.
Aside from her teaching duties, Ms. Bermudes is actively involved in the School’s Leadership Team/Accreditation, the AmeriCorps Program, NMC Student Teacher Program, Math and Social Studies Learning Community, Primary Grade Forensic Competition, and interscholastic Volleyball.
Ms. Raena Bermudes is a caring, knowledgeable, and passionate teacher with a positive attitude towards teaching and learning. Clearly she is an asset to our school and the public school system.
Ms. Chassie Castro joined the Binadu Family in 2008 and is going on her third year as a special education teacher aide. Through her work with special needs students, she has gained confidence in her abilities to work with children and is pursuing a field in teaching. She works one on one with autistic, ADHD, and children with learning disabilities by helping them stay on task. Aside from her duties as a special education teacher aide, Ms. Chassie is also part of our Response to Intervention (RtI) team that helps at risk learners. She teaches reading mastery daily to a group of struggling students, provides music and movement activities three times a week to our full day kindergarten program, willingly helps with extra-curricular activities such as interscholastic sports and school events, and she also supervises students in the morning and afterschool to ensure student safety. But it is her warm smile and optimistic attitude that makes her well loved by the students and staff.
Ms. Corazon San Nicolas, affectionately known as “Ms. Con” also joined the Binadu Team in 2008 as the school librarian. She has been instrumental in ensuring that our library is equipped with an array of books for all levels of readers. She provides library day once a week for kindergarten to sixth grade so that they have an opportunity to foster a love of reading. She starts out by reading picture books to the lower grades and chapter books to the upper grades. To give students more access to library time, she opens the library during student lunch breaks. Ms. San Nicolas also conducts story time every Mondays and Fridays to our full day kindergarten class to promote love of reading and build language and vocabulary development.
Having Ms. San Nicolas to be a part of the Binadu Team was a great investment. She is responsible, dependable, and reliable as demonstrated by her excellent attendance record. Aside from her duties as a librarian, Ms. San Nicolas teaches reading mastery daily to a group of struggling students and supervises students in the morning and afterschool. What is most appreciative of Ms. San Nicolas’ character is that she is an initiator. When she sees a need for something to be done, she does it. For example, with the library month proclamation, she coordinated the poster contest at the school level. For the Parade of Books competition, she willingly helped teachers organize the event. It is evident that Ms. San Nicolas readily accepts other responsibilities because she understands the importance of working as a team to reach our goals. Just recently, she completed 3 days of training with the Motheread/Fatheread Literacy Program and is now a certified trainer which guarantees the school that we can offer this literacy program to our parents every year. She is also our newly elected PTA Secretary.
Ms. Raena Bermudes, Ms. Chassie Castro, and Ms. Corazon San Nicolas continue to demonstrate their commitment to student learning at GTC. On behalf of the Binadu Family, we are proud and congratulate them for their accomplishments! Way to go Binadu Team!
