Parts of Author Qeona
Thank you for visiting my website! I am Qeona, author of Part of Me: Fractions at Reach! I am a lifelong educator. Teaching and learning have been two of my passions since I was a child playing school in my bedroom with my cousins and dolls.
On my journey as an educator, I came to a point where I was searching for something that was not there . . . a culturally responsive text focused on a particular content area, such as mathematics. I knew I needed to write a book from a student's perspective that would speak to the heart of educators and acknowledge the challenges that students face everyday in our care.
I hope you find all of the wonderful opportunities for instruction in this text. I challenge you to find PARTS where you can: address social emotional learning, facilitate contrastive analysis between home language to academic language, introduce fractions, teach vocabulary by exploring synonyms, and more . . .
Fun Facts
KeAndre
Some people think KeAndre is one of my former students. I have taught many students over the course of twenty-one years. KeAndre's character is a collective of the experiences I have had with children hoping to understand math better.
Other people think KeAndre is my son. While the character happens to resemble my son, he is not.
The same is not true for Mr. Ayala, though.
Mr. Ayala
Traditionally, when I read books about teachers, most of them are women. Therefore, it was important for me to have a male teacher of color represented in my book. The male teacher of color I chose doesn't fit the stereotypical appearance. Educators are diverse, just like students. I hope that Mr. Ayala's character inspires readers to appreciate the diversity and uniqueness of teachers around the world.
When deciding how Mr. Ayala should appear, I simply walked into the classroom of an inspiring educator, my husband. I snapped a photo of him reading to his students and sent the photo to my illustrator. There, Mr. Ayala came to form!
The Dedication
Years ago, I had a student who's a talented artist. One day, during a teacher-student writing conference, I noticed his skill for comic creations. It was something he was passionate about. So, I differentiated his assignment in order for him to express the message in his writing using that style. During our conversation, I encouraged him to consider exploring his passion as a career. I shared my love of writing and mentioned that I was writing a book. He told me that he would continue to work on his comics as long as I promised to work on my book. Through my Dedication Page, I wanted to honor our commitment with my first published book.
Contact
Have you found more ways to incorporate Part of Me: Fractions at Reach is your classroom or home?
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