We have an obligation and a responsibility
to be investing in our students and our schools.
We must make sure that people who have
the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get
the best education possible.
-Barack Obama

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
-Victor Hugo

My name is Mary Lou Kleczynski and I, too, live in NJ
and have lived here all my life, except for 5 months
when I lived in Florida, working on an internship in Disney
World. I am from Bayonne, where I attended an all girls
high school. I went to college (with our classmate Cara!)
at the College of New Jersey.
There, I also earned two degrees, one in Secondary Education
and one in English Literature. After graduating in May,
I was hired as a high school English teacher
in Bayonne High School that June.

I taught 9th and 10th grade lower level English my first year
and 10th lower and regular level English my second. In my third year
(and fourth and fifth), I was given 12th grade Inclusion and
lower level classes. I love teaching seniors!
I also facilitate the SRA instruction and scoring
before school and during the summer.

In addition to my responsibilities as a teacher and SRA instructor,
I work a part time job at a gym. I am also taking
a class on campus this semester, so I
thought an online class would save me some driving
and walking and provide me with a varied instructional method.
I am also recently engaged and am planning my wedding.

I am pursing my Master’s degree in Literacy and I am on the Reading Specialist
Certification K-12 track. This is my third class towards my Master’s,
so I am still very new to this process. I love reading,
but the variety of the duties of the Reading Specialist
is what makes this program so appealing to me. My career goal
is to be a Reading Specialist and work with students of various
age groups to improve literacy. I would also like to advocate
for continued literacy support in the secondary school environment.
I am extremely passionate about reading and literacy
and its link to self confidence and happiness.

I am looking forward to learning about early childhood and literacy
for personal reasons as well as professional reasons.
My dear nephew starts preschool this week and I am hoping to learn some things that
I can use to help him love reading and school the way I do
and help him be successful. Professionally, this information will be valuable to me
because I have limited knowledge about the earlier stages of development.

I am certainly looking forward to learning from everyone else’s areas of expertise
and getting to know all of you and your
individual perspectives on literacy.