From an early age, I knew that I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up. It was an automatic sense for me to realize that there are no dumb questions, it’s okay for everyone to have their own quirky strengths and weaknesses, and the depth of joyous satisfaction to be found in helping someone come to new awareness.

St. Louis, Missouri was my hometown growing up. I graduated from Mehlville High School there. The school nearest and dearest to my heart, however, is a little school in Temple Terrace, Florida, (called Florida College) where I got my A.A. degree and decided I wanted to be a speech therapist instead of a high school English teacher. When I left Florida College, I transferred to George Peabody College for Teachers, here in Nashville, before it was part of Vanderbilt, and got a B.A. with a double major in elementary and special education. To pursue my interest in speech therapy, I went on to Vanderbilt University for an M.S. degree in speech and hearing science.

For thirteen years I went from school to school doing speech and language therapy, then started teaching in self-contained special education classes for language impaired children. For the last eleven years, I’ve been teaching second grade right here at Norman Binkley and loving it, because second-graders are just tops.

Outside of school, my two grown sons and my cat are my closest and most frequent company. If I only had time after teaching school, going to school (to get an additional +30 hours), and spending time with my family and friends, I would have fun by reading a lot, doing needlework, trying out new recipes, and redecorating my house.

More information is available at this Web address:

http://www.teacherweb.com/TN/NormanBinkleySchool/KayStarr