Greetings and salutations!  My name is Andrea Alworth and I presently teach EIP classes at Oconee County Elementary.  “Life's a journey,” so they say, and the path to my current position has certainly been a varied and interesting one. Unlike many of my fellow educators, I really had no idea that teaching was my calling until graduate school - though looking back I should have suspected. I have always been fascinated by the world and hungry for knowledge.  I also loved interacting with children and spent my youth babysitting, teaching church school and working my way through college at a daycare.  Teaching is a field that allows me to combine my love of learning and my enthusiasm for working with children.

I grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, a truly unique place which instilled in me an appreciation for history, eclectic culture and a way of life steeped in deep traditions - oh, and food - nothing quite like the food!  I attended Benjamin Franklin High School, then went on Newcomb College/Tulane University where my father was a professor of chemistry.  I entered  graduate school at Tulane, initially enrolling in a doctoral course in Educational Psychology. I soon decided I wanted to interact more closely with the children I would be serving and transferred to the Education department where I received a Master's in Education.  Degree in hand, I headed off to join the ranks of k-12 educators across the nation.

I have been teaching since 1991, and have taught in four different states. five different districts and six different schools. I have worked as an in-house permanent substitute, a Title 1 teacher, and EIP teacher and a classroom teacher. Along the way I have worked with every grade level - Kindergarten through 5th - with special education students, Title 1 students, ESOL students, EIP students and gifted students.  I have dabbled as a media specialist, a secretary, a music teacher and literacy coach, and have received training across numerous subjects including content areas such as Wilson Reading, Write Traits writing, Daily Five, Discovery Science, Sitton Spelling, and Common Core math; basic pedagogy such as constructivist theory; assessment techniques like Dibels screening; and behavioral intervention approaches such as Choice language.  Over the years, I have served children of poverty as well as children of privilege. Regardless of which student population I am teaching, I have always done my best to implement best practices in my classroom, meet my individual students’ needs, instill a life-long love of learning and make every child feel comfortable, supported and special.