Hello Fellow 6106ers!

My name is Tracy Mitropoulos, I live in the seacoast area of New Hampshire with my husband of almost 28 years (I was married when I was just a child) and my two beautiful daughters.  My family is the center of my world and I am very blessed to have my parents close by, as well as a very large extended Greek family.  In case you couldn't tell from my last name, my husband is Greek.  Life is extremely busy for me right now.  Along with the professional endeavors that I will share with you below, my eldest daughter is getting married in June.  This is a wonderfully crazy-busy time!

I am presently working on my second master's degree, having completed my MSEd in 2007 from the University of New England.  What intrigues me about Lesley's Educational Technology degree was the option of earning an Online Teaching Certificate as well.  I am presently contracted with Virtual High School and am teaching a Personal Finance course for them that ends in mid-May.  During the first semester of the school year, I taught the same course as part of my daily teaching duties.  This allowed 25 of our students to take online VHS courses that we did not offer on our campus.  This semester is more challenging because I no longer have an hour and a half during the school day to teach my online course.

Due to the fact that I presently hold four different state of NH certifications, I teach very different subjects...you should see what my desk looks like at the end of each day!  I am presently teaching Accounting I (enriched), Accounting II (honors for college credit), Exploring Childhood (standard), and Human Growth and Development (honors for college credit).  During the fall term I created a CTE (Career and Technical Education) program for Accounting, so next school year my accounting classes will an official CTE Program!  This was a lot of work, but benefits of changing to a CTE program is well worth it. I also added two more college courses (Running Start) in the area of Education that will be offered next school year.  As you can probably tell, I strongly support Dual Enrollment and Running Start courses for high school students.  It is a wonderful and affordable way to give them an excellent start as they move toward high education.

The last thing that I would like to share is one of the projects that I am working on with other teachers in my school district.  Last week about 40 teachers from my district started working on a Blended Learning Initiative.  The work is being funded by a grant so our district and create the framework to move forward as a Blended Learning School District.  This is so exciting!  I am passionate about blended learning and started this work on my own years ago in one of my college-level classes.  I am hoping to combine this work with ECOMP6106 because I feel that they compliment each other and will be very beneficial to my teaching.

Well, if you are still reading, thank you!  I tend to write a lot when I am passionate about my topic, and when education can support my students and help propel them to reach their full potential, my excitement is difficult to contain.

I am looking forward to working with all of you this term!

Tracy in NH