Carroll Grimes third grade teacher at Avalon ISD
Carroll Grimes — Carroll Grimes, third grade teacher for Avalon, says, “It is wonderful to know that Avalon ISD really focuses on the children. The most important thing to me in a school is the support of the administration and the whole staff working together as a team. This school has an awesome team.” (Cindy Sutherland)
Carroll Grimes is another wonderful addition to Avalon ISD. She graduated from Texas A&M Commerce and landed her first teaching job at Corsicana ISD where she taught Kindergarten and second grade.
Carroll now teaches third grade for Avalon ISD. “I am over joyed to work here. I never thought I would get to work here. I always wanted to work in a small school. I did my internship at Frost and my residency at Mildred ISD. I ended up at Corsicana and I learned a lot, but I like the small school setting, the smaller classes and the family unit ‘feel’ at this school.”
“I hope to provide my students with an excellent education. My goal is that they all exceed the expectation on the TAKS test and learn all they can for third grade. My main goal is that each student leaves my class with a great amount of self confidence because they have learned so much,” explained Grimes.
Carroll has many techniques for helping her students learn to the best of their ability. One of the ways she has found to be successful is to put them in groups of four. The students pick their team name. They earn points for good behavior, team work and class participation. On Friday the team with the most points gets a special privilege at the end of the day. They may get free talk/play time, listen to an appropriate CD of their choice or play games. “I always tell them it will be a surprise. I will change the teams every two or three weeks so that everyone gets a chance to be on another team and rename their team.” Grimes went on to say, “The teams also work well for cooperative learning groups. The students work together on assignments, learning games, reading fluency, math, science, social studies or anything they can work together on.”
Students in Grimes class are rewarded for good behavior. One way they are rewarded is each time a teacher complements her class she writes a letter on the board. When there are enough letters to spell a word they can bring games or a toy to play with for the last thirty minutes of the class on Fridays.
Carroll is married to Michael Grimes and has been for eleven years. They have two children that attend Avalon. Her son Daniel is in Ms. Pustejovsky’s second grade class and her daughter Mackenzie is in Mrs. Low’s Kindergarten class.
“Anything I can do to help teach or mentor a student will make me happy. I feel the best in my heart when I know I have helped someone else. I lean on my faith in God and prayer to get my family, myself and my students through each great and eventful day. It it weren’t for all my prayers and faith, I would not be where I am today,” said Grimes.