About Me

Hi all!

My name is Michelle Ziegelbaur and I am working toward a Secondary teaching certification for biology and chemistry. I am particularly passionate about teaching evolution well and dispelling common misconceptions about it.  

The antelope named Lyle that
 my family takes care of.

I spent many years of my childhood living in West/Central Africa. My parents and youngest brother currently live in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, where my parents work at a school called Rain Forest International School (where my other brother and I both graduated from). Last summer I spent a couple months with them there where I was able to teach an 8th grade science unit and spend time with my family for the first time in 2 years.  

Jumping off the bridge in South Africa.

I absolutely love travelling to new countries, hiking, and practicing my photography.  Some fun things I've done: climbed the highest mountain in West Africa, hiked in the Lake District in the UK, and bungee jumped off Bloukrans Bridge in South Africa.  Most recently, I spent spring break in Mexico snorkeling with sea turtles and exploring a couple cenotes!

I have two bearded dragons I call my "lizzard children," named Kaladin and Jasnah after characters in my favorite novel series by Brandon Sanderson, The Stormlight Archives (all of his novels are excellent; the Mistborn series in particular if you are looking for some books to get into).  I also have a lot of plants.

Another one of my interests is music. I spend a lot of my free time seeking out new songs and I have a PLETHORA of suggestions of songs by little-known bands, usually folk or folk rock. I also play guitar, and have a couple of friends I occasionally get together with and jam with.  I love doing covers, like this one of Down in the Valley by The Head and the Heart:

So there's a little bit about me!

*Edit:
I forgot to mention what my experience is with technology in the classroom!
During my teacher assisting last semester, I was also taking the class Chemistry in Secondary Ed, which introduced me to a site called PhET. This site has a lot of fun simulations of chemistry concepts! I love these and used one in a lesson I taught the chemistry students in my placement.  I was also introduced to Kahoot when I shadowed my student teaching cooperating teacher and used that as a review game for the unit I taught the biology students.  That's about the extent of my experience with planning technology use in the classroom.  For various classes, I've used Twitter and Weebly, but that's about it. I'm very excited to be exposed to new ideas of ways to incorporate various technology into lesson plans!