Mrs. Terry Zeytoonian

Grafton Middle School

Grade 6 Science

 

Contact Information…

                   Email: tzeytoonian@ycsd.york.va.us

                   Phone:  Grafton Middle School  898-0525

                   Conferences are arranged through

                   the student’s guidance counselor.

 

All About

          Originally from New Jersey, I have been a teacher in York County since 1993. My husband, Bruce, and I live in Gloucester and have three beautiful grown daughters, all graduates of Tabb High and Virginia Tech. I graduated from Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J. with a Bachelor of Arts in Education and completed my Masters of Science at the University of Nebraska in Administration and Supervision.

          My teaching experiences include 25 years plus in both public and private schools in a half dozen different states as well as for the Department of Defense Dependent Schools in Germany.

          I served 20 years in the Air Force Reserve as a medic (Nationally Registered EMT), primarily training in the emergency room and flying aero medical evacuation missions, qualified on C-141 and C-130 aircraft, to Europe and Central America.

          Needless to say, I absolutely love to travel. I am also a weekend gardener and antique hunter!

 

Why teaching…

          Starting with the ancient Greeks, philosophers have struggled with the “how, who, what and why” that constitutes education. Every age and culture has answered those questions in different ways. All are caring adults searching to find meaningful ways to transmit the sum and substance of civilization and knowledge to the next generation.

         

As a teacher…

 I believe that the best way to create a productive learning environment is to employ educational methods, techniques and principles that are based on unbiased scientific research. 

I believe that all children can learn if given a safe, respectful environment where required content is presented in a way that supports both the novice or reluctant learner as well as the gifted and self-motivated.

I believe that learning should be engaging and create opportunities to process content on all levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

I believe that all children perceive and learn differently. They need to be given opportunities to construct personal meaning from the subject matter in ways that meet their learning style whether it is cognitive, affective or psychomotor.

I believe that parents are their children’s primary teachers, and although cheesy, the poem “Children Learn What They Live”, has a lot to do with how children behave and approach learning tasks in school.

I believe that, as reasonable as possible, children should be able to test their limits and take risks. In “Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins”, Farson and Keyes note “acceptance (that neither success or failure are what they seen to be) produces…environments that are genuinely risk friendly, which is to say failure tolerant…Those who are passionately engaged in a task they care about are the ones most likely to achieve success.”

Albert Einstein once remarked that knowledge exists in two forms, lifelessly stored in books and alive in the consciousness of men. To that end my “job” is to teach Science based on state mandated standards of learning, but my “joy” comes from educating my students to strive for excellence in themselves by challenging them, through the acquisition of content knowledge, to find and understand their innate abilities, talents, and skills and learn to use them to influence both the quality of their life and people around them.