Sara Baker

• Led efforts to boost student attendance and on-time arrivals with ambitious parent relations initiatives.
• Organized individualized behavior improvement plans for students struggling with compliance.
• Established and enforced clear school-wide disciplinary procedures to protect students and staff.
• Developed strategies to improve student behavior school-wide and help teachers better manage classroom environments.
• Collaborated with faculty to identify and address institutional challenges as a member of MHS Solutions committee.
• Developed and implemented student success initiatives to recognize and encourage achievement as chair of Freshmen Problem Solving Team.
• As part of district discipline committee, improved policies and procedures to maximize student safety and campus security.
• Implemented strategies to increase student sense of belonging and engagement as administrative faculty advisor of Link Crew.
• Partnered with leadership team members on staff presentation of 5Essentials Survey in addition to being a district 5Essentials Survey committee member.

Fillmore Elementary:

• Crisis Response Violence Prevention team member (Crisis Prevention Institute- Nonviolent Crisis Intervention certified).
• Youth Leadership Team Facilitator.
• Student Intervention Team member.
• Building Student Achievement Team member.
• Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports facilitator.
• Behavior Team member using Responsibility-Centered Discipline.
• IEP meeting LEA representative.
• Attendance Team member including home visits.
• Implemented a school-wide tier 1 Social Emotional Learning initiative called Challenge to Change.
• Created slides and presented at professional development staff meetings.
• School managerial responsibilities including fidelity checks, struggling teacher support and interventions, parent communication for online students, tier 3 student instruction, student supervision, classroom teacher coverage, school-wide behavior support.
• Attend district-wide leadership professional development meetings.

Hinsdale Central High School:

• Advised and disciplined students in deans' office which included daily student/teacher/parent communication.
• Created master schedule for 28-person science department.
• Made and coordinated school-wide final exam supervisory schedule for over 100 people.
• Worked on security budget for school safety and activities.
• Led teacher discussion groups on making decisions about what to incorporate in school’s mission statement.
• Led new hire professional development groups.
• Organized Career Day for Science.
• Member of interviewing team for science position.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

John Deere Middle School:

• School Improvement Plan co-chair.
• Facilitated interesting and diverse group activities to engage students in course material.
• Built learning and citizenship skills to help with personal growth in addition to increasing academic knowledge.

Muscatine High School:

• Anatomy and Physiology Teacher; upper level course for college bound students.
• Biology Teacher; general level classes including students with mild to severe learning and behavioral disabilities in co-taught classes with positive behavior reinforcement as main objective.
• Active member of Biology PLC; including using aligned curriculum to Next Generation Science Standards.
• Proficient in using data from common formative and summative assessments for individual student interventions.
• Attendance team member for student outreach, data collection and analysis.
• Teacher mentor for at-risk students.

Hinsdale Central High School:

• Cooperating teacher for student teacher.
• Taught co-taught collaborative classes to students with mild to severe learning and behavioral disabilities.
• Taught General Biology, Regular Biology, Honors Biology and Chemistry.
• Extensive communication between students with disabilities and their Individual Education Program teacher.
• Team leader of biology instructional team.
• Created numerous modifications to include all students in active learning along with using learned practices of differentiated learning.
• Level head soccer coach, volleyball assistant coach, supervised extra-curricular activities.
• Snowball staff member.
• Chairperson of Career Day for Women in Science.
• Character Counts curriculum committee member.
• Ecology Club co-chair.
• Active member of Biology instructional teams.

Gurrie Middle School:

• Taught Science and Literature to a diverse population of students with English as their second language.
• Participated in seventh grade team planning.
• Coordinated peer-tutoring program.
• Sponsored Science Club, organized Career Day field trip for girls.
• Participated in on-going differentiation workshop to meet needs of diverse learners.
• Coached soccer, mentored homeroom advisory.