Thursday, March 28, 2013

Welcome to WiseLearners.com



My name is Angel Rodriguez. I'm a educator, adoptive dad, scholar, neuro-geek, and amateur stuntman (according to my kiddos). I have joyfully been helping others learn for nearly 17 years and each has been an adventure. During that time I’ve taught children in Kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade and Special Education classes. I’ve also served as an ESOL teacher and Technology Specialist as well. I currently work with families as the Parent Instructional Support Coordinator (I’d much rather just say I’m a teacher) at Kanoheda Elementary. This school is part of the Gwinnett County Public Schools, which is the largest school system in the state of Georgia. Although I miss having my own kiddos, I’m blessed to have had the unique opportunity of teaching families how they can best support the education of their children. I get to offer workshops, trainings, and coordinate school events for our families. I loved being able to work with 20+ families per year before working in this capacity, but it has been a dream come true to have the chance to work with 900+ families per year and help make an impact.


In addition to working with families as an educator, I’ve also served as a foster parent for 8 years. My wife and I specialized in working with families in crisis, caring for children diagnosed as having severe physical, mental, and emotional disorders, which included Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD).
Through this experience, my wife and I were able to double the number of children in our family instantly. We were fortunate beyond words to add a daughter and a son through the blessing of adoption (and with limited labor pains according to my wife). Each of our youngest deals with the effects of FASD, although this form of brain damage manifests in different ways within each of them. I look forward to sharing more about them with you soon (they are my favorite topic of discussion after all).

Over the years, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity of working with thousands of families of every imaginable type. Seriously, you name it, I've seen it. Honestly, for those that know my family, we are a rather unique group ourselves (ahh, but that is another story). What I hope to accomplish through this WiseLearners is to reach out to families and help them by sharing what I’ve learned over the years. My main objective is to empower our most critical community of learners, our parents. I want you to take advantage of the expertize you possess regarding your child. Despite the best intentions of educators, our months of experience working with a student can never hope to match the lifetime of knowledge a parent already possesses. We want to capitalize on this unrivaled strength, and combine it with simple strategies to empower to help your child learn more than ever before. I want to create a community of wise learners! My goal is to help you stay actively engaged in supporting your child’s education, not just in the elementary grades, but throughout their life! We want you to play a major learning role in middle school, high school, college, and beyond! 

Through the most unlikely of circumstances, I have been blessed in accumulating an incredibly unique body of experience and I have purposed myself to help as many people as possible by sharing this knowledge. Every minute I've ever spent doing this has been absolute bliss, and I look forward to more each day! I believe in the power of people and the possibilities of potential and I can’t wait to see what can be accomplished in the future working together. No one will ever be able to say that I did not do my part or that my heart wasn’t in it!  = )

Please check back often to find out just how EASY it can be to stay involved academically in your child’s life in elementary, middle school, high school, and beyond! I believe with all of my heart that each of our children can become wise learners!

2 comments:

  1. Angel glad to see you are posting - your wisdom is right on and so appreciate you helping our kids
    Jodee

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you Jodee! I'm really enjoying this and I love sharing things that could help others.

    ReplyDelete