Lalla Pierce is a teacher at Brown-Barge Middle School in Pensacola, FL. Brown-Barge is a magnet school that uses an integrated approach to middle school curriculum. Lalla was selected as Brown-Barge’s Teacher of the Year this year, serves as their English-Language Arts Department Chair, facilitates “Write On! Brown-Barge:” a professional development and student writing model, represents Brown-Barge as their Escambia Educator Evaluation Leader, in addition to other school responsibilities. She currently is participating in The Center for Teaching Quality’s Fall 2013 VOICE Cohort and was chosen as one of two Escambia County Educators to attend The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s “Elevating and Celebrating Effective Teachers and Teaching” conference in February of 2013.

Lalla received her M. Ed. Specializing in Educational Technology from The University of Florida in May of 2013. Her practicum research project was titled: “Math Matters: Will Edmodo Matter? Exploring the Use of Edmodo to Enhance Math Instruction.” She is excited to pursue her education further at UF through the M.Ed. Online Educational Leadership Program.

Professionally, Lalla intends to eventually seek administrative or other leadership roles to carry out what she believes to be a calling. She states, “Whether teaching students in my classroom, influencing youth outside of my classroom, or influencing teachers and parents—leading within and beyond my classroom is part of my responsibility to society. No program will better prepare me to do this than the M.Ed. Online program in Educational Leadership offered by The University of Florida.”

All thy loyal sons and daughters, all hail, Florida hail!

Go Gators!