Mrs. Taylor - Hoffman-Boston

General Education Teacher

VPI Class (Mrs. Taylor/Mr. Klein)

Mrs. Taylor

Role

Hello! My name is Helena Taylor and my role as a VPI teacher is to support my students’ education in any way I can. My goal is that all my students make a full year of progress: from being shy to working together with friends, from struggling to hold a crayon correctly to drawing pictures with many details, and from not knowing the difference between numbers and letters to recognizing many uppercase and lowercase letters (including their sounds) and numbers.

Professional Background

I received my Master’s Degree in Elementary Education from University of Jana Evangelista Purkyne in the Czech Republic. I taught there for 4 years before coming to the USA. Here I started teaching preschool at a private school and fell in love working with the little ones. In 2009, I joined the VPI Team at Hoffman-Boston first as an assistant and then, after receiving my Virginia Teaching License, as a teacher. I feel fortunate working with such a great group of enthusiastic educators. Go All-Stars!!!

Personal Interests

In my free time I enjoy the outdoors. I went hiking, jogging and biking with my family and friends during the pandemic quite often. Recently I started playing pickle ball and it’s a lot of fun. On rainy days, I like to solve puzzles, listen to audible books and cook with my daughter.

Literary Connection

There are many early childhood books that I like. I picked Chicka Chicka Boom Boom written by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault and illustrated by Lois Ehlert. This book is a great example of how learning the alphabet can be fun. If you have never seen the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom video from Scholastic, you should watch it with your preschooler. The melody is very catchy and you will be humming it for the rest of your day. Just like I do with my students when I teach lowercase letter recognition.