“She’s just a great fit,” Snider said. “She just shows a passion that these kids feed off of.”
While she’s there to help students with disabilities, Beach and Snider said their goal is that no one knows who those kids are in the classroom. They’re both in front of students at the board and working with students one-on-one.
Beach graduated from Fairmont in 2008. She was struggling in pre-calculus, but Beach’s math teacher’s schedule and Beach’s schedules didn’t line up for extra help. The teacher asked Snider if he could help, and it worked out.
Beach is in her first year of teaching as an intervention specialist. She struggled in high school and went to college to become a teacher, but with her disability, she had a difficult time completing her degree.
Instead, she became a paraprofessional at Prass Elementary in Kettering and did that for 12 years. But the teachers on her floor recognized her potential as a teacher and encouraged her to go back to school and finish her teaching degree.
While Beach said it was hard, the teachers at Prass promised to help her get through her degree.
“I felt like God was saying, you’re going to go back to school because you have the help you need now,” Beach said.
Beach said she knew she wanted to work with special education kids since she was in high school.
Now she can teach kids like her, which Beach said is incredible.
“I know what it’s like to just need that extra help and have to fight so hard for it, and now I get to help these kids that need that,” Beach said.
Beach said she enjoyed her time in high school and stayed in Kettering after graduation. Coming back to teach at her high school is a “dream come true,” she said.
“I hated having to leave high school, so to be able to come back to where I loved, it’s so fun,” Beach said. “It’s a dream job.”
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