When Ms. Sandra Joy Ruban entered college, becoming a teacher was nowhere on her list of plans. She dreamed of a career in broadcasting and was working to make that happen when an unexpected experience in Singapore changed her life. While tutoring Chinese and Japanese students in English, Ms. Ruban discovered a passion for helping others learn — a discovery that eventually led her to teach seventh, eighth, and ninth grade language arts classes.
Ms. Ruban is originally from the Philippines, but she came to us from St. Michael’s Catholic school in Sioux City because it, unfortunately, had to permanently close its doors to education at the end of last school year.
She has now been a teacher for nine years and loves it. She likes to make learning more fun for her students by incorporating performance tasks and experimental learning into her less ons. For instance she somet imes asks her students to incorporate music into their reading and has them perform it in front of the class. She also has them create their own endings and make comic strips to go with the book they read, “I want them to create something because when you create something it stays in your brain for a long time, but if you just read when you leave the class you forget about it,” Ms. Ruban said.
