Matthew Birkmaier

At ACES I co-lead a group of around 25 k-5 children through various activities, crafts, outdoors games, and weekly field trips. Flexibility and cooperation with coworkers has been a key component in managing my classroom of students. In the 3 summers I've worked at ACES, I've learned to handle issues with patients, kindness, and equality.

At Chileda I worked with severely mentally disabled children and assisted them along their days. Assistance given here followed the discipline of trauma informed care, and works to accommodate for each child's special needs. This job has taught me to value the knowledge provided by co-workers and how to efficiently gain skills through those with more experience.

As a shift lead at Pita pit I ran almost every aspect of the restaurant. I could open or close, manage the money, and allocate my co-workers to various areas of work. Working in the foods industry taught me a lot about working with customers and has helped strengthen my social skills. Since this was my first job it helped establish my hard work ethic, as I was always busy.