Madeline Cole
Teacher at Rover Elementary School
Madeline Cole is a beloved Arizona teacher—known for her influence in the fifth grade and her (many!) major impacts at Rover Elementary School in Tempe. Cole has also been doing Junior Achievement of Arizona for over a decade.
What inspired you to be a teacher? I had many teachers throughout my education that demonstrated so much encouragement and creativity to me. In my fourth grade year, I was sent to help “teach” two students in first grade from Saudi Arabia. As a fourth grade student, I taught them letters and sounds and small English words. That thrill of watching people learn, because of something I did, took over!
Your must-have school supply for the beginning of each year/semester is: Pencils, notebooks and colored pencils are the tools I can teach anything with! We go through many dry erase markers and regular markers too!
Best piece of advice for a new educator? The best piece of advice I have for a new educator is to ENJOY your students. Get to know each student individually because it then helps you manage them collectively. I love sharing small bits of info about students with their classmates. They truly feel highlighted, and that “we” have a special bond.
If your students take away one lesson from being in your classroom, what do you hope that lesson is? The one lesson I hope for my students is that they learn to listen to others and to care for each other, no matter how different we are. I truly try to model that every human life is important.