Ever since she was fifteen Kandi has been teaching in one form or another. It’s an integral part of who she is.

Teaching-focused Bio

Impetus for starting

Before her last year of high school, Kandi J Wyatt visited missionaries in Winslow, Arizona. While there, an older missionary advised that if a single woman wished to minister with the Navajo or Hopi people, she would need to be either a nurse or a teacher. Since Kandi squirms at the sight of much blood, she opted for teaching. However, her journey began earlier than that defining moment.

Early teaching

Her dad had become the pastor of a small church north of Spokane, Washington. Her mom asked her to help with the Wednesday night kids club. At first it was teaching the memory verse, but later it grew to telling the Bible story. These experiences were what cemented the idea of being a teacher in her heart. As she moved on to college, she continued teaching Sunday School and children’s church.

Training

Those training years were formative in how she viewed her position as a teacher. She was privileged to have her own first grade teacher as a professor. Although the professor had verified it with a class photo, it became real to Kandi in her methods class when the teacher demonstrated how she’d get students’ attention. The words “Everyone put your head down” triggered a response that placed Kandi into the psyche of her first-grade self!

Kandi did her practicum in a combined first and second grade classroom at a Christian school. Her first job was teaching in a first through third grade classroom at a small Christian school north of where she lives. She enjoyed watching children’s eyes light up when they understood that letters had meaning and could read on their own. Her next assignment was a third- through seventh-grade self-contained classroom of fifteen students. This school gave her the foundation of juggling lesson plans and being there for students who needed her.

Master’s degree

When her youngest was three or four, she felt comfortable looking into substitute teaching while her parents cared for him. To receive her certificate, she needed nine-quarter credits. Much to her surprise, Southern Oregon University had a summer program out of her local community college that enabled her to get all nine in a matter of three weeks. This started her journey to her master’s degree in education as well as her love for junior high and high school.

Over the next two summers she took classes at the community college, online, independently with the teacher that did the summer classes, and in Guanajuato, Mexico. She taught her practicum while substituting for a high school Spanish teacher who was out for knee surgery.

Substituting

When Kandi first started substituting, she told the secretary that she’d sub for elementary and high school Spanish, since she knew Spanish. To her surprise, she only received one call for elementary and that was in the last year of her substitute career! Instead, the secretary learned that if she said, “I have sub plans”, Kandi would say yes and go wherever she was needed. That meant she taught everything from shop to P.E., band to Social Studies, Spanish to Language Arts and everything in between. However, after subbing for junior high and high school, she realized that was what she had wanted to teach all along.

To add on her high school endorsement to her master’s degree, she needed a longer practicum. Thankfully, Marshfield High School needed a teacher for a year and was willing to offer a conditional license to teach and work with Southern Oregon University to give her that.

Junior high and high school career

After that year, she moved to Myrtle Point Junior High and Senior High School to teach Spanish and ELL. Being thrown into English for students of other languages at Marshfield had given her a basis, but as she worked with the students at Myrtle Point, Kandi earned her ESOL endorsement through Oregon State University.

Six years after substituting in her local district, she was able to become the Spanish teacher at Pacific High School where she’d done her first practicum. She enjoys the small school atmosphere, even though it means she teaches whatever she’s told. She jokes there are two classes she won’t teach. The first is math because it’d be a disservice to the students. The other is Defense of the Dark Arts because that teacher never remains at Hogwarts longer than one year.

Speaking Topics

After more than fifteen years of teaching, Kandi brings her insights to your group or as a mentor for novice educators.

*How to Build a Lesson Plan
*Keep Them Active: Keys to Maintaining Control in a Junior High Classroom
*Surviving Your First Year
*Classroom Management Tips and Tricks