Tell us why you became a teacher

I know no other life; I wanted to be a teacher since I learned about jobs. I grew up helping my mom with my sister and then loving working with kids at camp or babysitting. I started making my dream a reality. I have been teaching for 12 years now!

Tell us about your most memorable teaching experience

Being a special education teacher can come with positive memories,but also negative memories.My most memorable experiences revolve around the growth and transformation of my hardest students. I was a K/1/2 12:1:1 teacher, with students that had many speech and language issues. A boy, S, would come up to me every day to open his snack and would just hand it to me.So every single day, we would work on verbalizing what he needed.It took months but he eventually said “Ms.Chaplin can you open this?”

What would you do with the $25,000?

I would definitely do something for my school community with some of the money. I would want to give back to my home away from home. I’ve been at the school for 10 years and don’t plan on leaving anytime soon; I love it! I would also take time to treat myself and plan a trip that I would take during my well-deserved summer vacation time!