Photo by Monique Schoenfeld, Town Crier
Kristen Cook is a first-grade teacher at Bullis-Purissima School.
Town Crier Staff Writer
Name: Kristen Cook
School: A first-grade teacher at Bullis-Purissima School in Los Altos Hills, where she was hired as a Los Altos School District educator this school year.
Teaching highlights: Cook has been recognized as an outstanding educator during her eight years as a certified preschool through grade 8 teacher.
She received Virginia's Golden Apple Award as outstanding teacher while working in grades one and two in Virginia.
Cook earned a grant to study teaching methods for beginning readers at Christchurch College in New Zealand for four weeks after receiving the REB Award for Teaching Excellence in 1996.
Background: Growing up the daughter, granddaughter and sister of teachers, Cook said her decision to become a teacher was "kind of natural. I always wanted to be one."
The Connecticut native graduated from Radford University in Virginia in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in early and middle school education. She earned her master's in education and administration and supervision from the University of Richmond in 1996, while teaching in the Hanover County Public School system near Richmond.
She taught grades one and two for eight years in Hanover before coming to Los Altos with her husband, who is completing a fellowship at Stanford University.
Cook enjoys teaching reading. She said she is drawn to first and second grades because she never knows what to expect from her young students, she said.
"Every day is different," she said.
Philosophy: Cook said she wants to "make learning fun." This means incorporating a lot of hands-on activities into the classroom so the students don't "just sit with paper and a pencil. I want to make sure that every child leaves the classroom feeling good about what he or she can do and have confidence in their day to day abilities," she said.
Those abilities can include anything from doing well in math and reading to getting along well with other students, she said.
Today: Cook said she plans to spend her first year "getting into sync" with the Los Altos School District. Although the eight-school district is smaller than the 13-school district where she taught last year, Cook said the class sizes are the same.
"This is all brand new. (The district) is different in a lot of little ways. There's no cafeteria or school buses, but the big things are the same," she said.
Cook said the staff and strong community involvement attracted her to the district.
"It's really nice to have such great support. It makes the job easier," she said.