Ms. Juanita Williams is McDonald's Featured Teacher for Seminole County Public Schools

Ms. Juanita Williams is the Seminole County Public Schools Featured Teacher!

You may also view her Featured Teacher Video here.

Message from Ms. Williams:

Hello. I am Juanita Williams, and I am pleased to be the McDonald's Featured Teacher for Seminole County Public Schools. I teach English II Honors and Advanced Placement English Language and Composition at Crooms Academy of Information Technology, a nationally-ranked technology magnet high school here in Seminole County, Florida.

Florida has been my home since I was about six months old, so I am nearly a native Floridian. I have lived in the Orlando area since I was eight and all of my education happened locally. After attending Orlando public schools, the University of Central Florida granted me a Bachelors degree in Applied Sociology in 1989 and a Masters degree in Secondary Language Arts Education in 2006.

I came to teaching after a twenty-plus year career in the insurance and information technology industries. I went back to school at age 40 to train in a new career field and started teaching during the 2005-2006 school year. I have always been a voracious reader, and it was my love of literature that brought me to the teaching profession. My love of writing was really developed by my participation in the National Writing Project in 2007. The idea of the project is that teachers who are writers will be better at teaching writing. I use things I learned from the research-based principles of the National Writing Project every day in my classroom. Some of my core teaching principles are that every student can excel, writers write, project-based learning stretches our brains and gives an accurate snapshot of student learning, and we all need to constantly learn throughout our entire lives.

My school honored me during my first year of teaching by awarding me the Crooms Academy Rookie Teacher of the Year recognition in 2006 and further honored me as Teacher of the Year in 2009. My colleagues continued to invest in my future through training and through the guidance of such hard-working and talented administrators as Dr. Connie Collins and Dr. Mickey Reynolds. I cannot say enough about these women who molded me in my early days of teaching. They are amazing!

I am currently the sponsor for the Reynolds Right Hands, a group of empowered students who work diligently for student safety by advocating against distracted driving, and the Crooms Writer's Guild, an after-school writers group where we write, share our writing, and flex our writing muscles. Daily interaction with students is the very best part of this job that I love.

Education improves your life. Teaching improves my life. Thank you for the honor of being the McDonald's Featured Teacher.