Cindy
Lamb Hatch is a St. George native and Pine View High School graduate, who
earned a bachelor's degree in elementary education and later an M.Ed. from SUU,
and she made a pronounced difference in the lives of hundreds of children in
her 14-year teaching career.
At
St. George’s Sandstone Elementary School, she taught second grade for a decade and
taught first grade students for three years before teaching science in her
final year to Sandstone’s 600-plus students from kindergarten to fifth grade on
a rotation schedule for the school's STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering,
and Math) program.
“When
I taught science,” she says of her STEM experience, “I helped reinforce
concepts taught in the regular classroom. It was a lot of fun and a lot of
work. Every grade level project had to be prepped for about 100 students. I
loved it though because the kids were always excited to be there, and our class
deepened their love and knowledge of science.”
Cindy
left her second home and family at Sandstone last year and is now staying home
with her daughter, born in July. She and her husband of three years, Ryan, have
three children, two of whom Cindy says she is “lucky to be a bonus mom” to, plus
the newest addition to the family.
When
she first started at SUU, Cindy, like many students, explored a few other
majors before finally choosing an education major. She was drawn to the program
by her love of helping kids, and she thought the program would be fun, too. She
reports that an education major was a lot more work than she ever anticipated.
While
in the BLOCK program, Cindy really started to find her creative side when it
came to teaching. The BLOCK experience helped carry her through all of her
years in the classroom.
“It's no secret that teachers don't have large
yearly budgets, so I really learned how to create my own projects and put my
spin on things,” she recalls. “The creative aspect of teaching was my favorite
part. The challenge was always in finding ways to make lessons memorable
without spending any money, or basically making something out of nothing.”
A
highlight of Cindy's experiences in education was her association with her
colleagues, she says, and adds that she loved working with parents, especially
parents of first graders, because first grade students made significant growth
progress throughout a school year.
Cindy
credits her undergraduate studies for giving her a strong foundation to begin
her teaching career. She says, “I felt like I always had a lot of support from
the professors. They were very personable and created environments where we
could all learn from each other.”
In
the graduate program, Cindy says she really learned to “dig in deep,” which took her teaching to a higher
level.
“When
I got my master's degree in education,” she says, “I learned that I was an
effective teacher based on the research I did for my thesis project. My project
gave me a lot of confidence in myself as an educator. It showed me that all my
efforts were making a difference. Getting my master's degree was one of the
best things I've done.”
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