“The best decision I ever made was to work with students in special education,” Sandrika Freeman gushes.
Sandrika, a third-year special education teacher at Glenn Elementary in Durham Public School District, radiates pride and enthusiasm when she speaks about her teaching career.
“I knew I wanted to go into education but wasn’t sure which path at first,” she explains. A love of education runs deep in Sandrika’s family; her mother was a teacher, and her father serves on her home county’s board of education.
Sandrika earned a bachelor’s degree in Human Development and Family Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill, then stayed on at UNC to earn a Master of Arts in Teaching with a concentration in Special Education. Originally a policy major, Sandrika knew she wanted to advocate for students who needed extra support.
During her student teaching term at Merrick Moore Elementary, Sandrika learned about Hill Learning Center from two colleagues, Anna Britt Harty and Dawn McClendon, who tutor through Hill’s long-running program.
Sandrika joined Hill Learning Center’s tutoring program in the 2022-2023 school year and first taught summer school in 2023.
“What drew me to Hill was the small class sizes,” she remembers. “Plus, I was able to implement and practice so many different strategies and keep myself fresh.”
She remembers a particularly effective summer instructional activity: practicing phonemic awareness by writing words in shaving cream.
“Hill’s summer program allowed me to explore and fall in love with teaching again because I got to try new strategies I wouldn’t get to try at my regular school.”
In fact, Hill’s research-based methods and supportive environment have helped Sandrika understand her own learning on a much deeper level.
“It wasn’t until I started to do the Hill Learning Center [professional learning] courses that I truly started to understand how my brain works when I’m reading,” Sandrika explains.
“I recently got diagnosed with ADHD and a learning disability in reading and math,” she remarks. “It’s amazing to see how my own brain has shifted since coming to Hill. I can only imagine being a child and having somebody helping me one-on-one with the skills I needed the most help with.”
When Sandrika works with her Hill tutoring students and her Glenn Elementary classroom pupils, she is able to see herself in them.
She understands that strong teacher-student relationships help students feel safe to take learning risks. “I want my students to know ‘It’s okay for me to slow down or make a mistake.’”
“Thanks to Hill, I’ve become a better teacher because I’m able to teach a student how to read. That’s one of my proudest accomplishments: I can teach a child to read.”