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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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Contact
Have you found more ways to incorporate Part of Me: Fractions at Reach is your classroom or home?
Share your ideas or visit my author page.