Mrs. Miles is a 9th-grade history teacher employed at Crofton High School. Students describe her personality as bubbly personality and her classes as upbeat.

She explained that she went to school for business at first, but had always loved the idea of teaching.

“Well, I used to always want to be a teacher when I was little. I used to play “school” in my room with my little sister and got all these school supplies. It was so fun. But, as I grew older I started to move towards pursuing a career in business,” she said.” I worked super hard to get into the Business School at the University of Maryland. Once I started classes, however, I took a really awesome US History class that made me realize I really wanted to become a history teacher.”

According to Mrs. Miles, learning is the best part of teaching.

“I get paid to learn along with my students. I get to help my students learn new things every day. I also get so much energy from working with amazing young people,” she said.

Mrs. Miles started at Anne Arundel Community College, then attended the University of Maryland, College Park for undergraduate and graduate studies.

She explained that she prioritizes encouraging creativity in class. “I try to find ways to allow students to explore topics in a variety of ways and to present what they learned in a variety of ways. I will often give students choices on how to complete an assessment. I also try to have a variety of different activities during every lesson that help students get involved in different ways,” she said.

In addition to creativity, Mrs. Miles said she wants to make learning fun for students.“The thing I try to do best is to empower students to see what each of them is capable of learning and doing amazing things. When in-person, I use activities that allow students to get up and move around the classroom. I try to have documents and images printed out so students can actually work with the materials. I like to ensure students have a voice within the lesson and whenever I can I like to make things into games,” she said.