Alumna Mikyla Avakian from UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School has received the certificated employee of the year award at the Meiners Oaks School in the Ojai Unified School District. Avakian, who teaches a moderate/severe special day class for K-3 students, earned her credential in the Teacher Education Program’s Education Specialist track and her M.Ed. in 2015.
Avakian was born and raised in Santa Barbara and received her bachelors from Cal State Northridge with a major in Deaf Studies. She currently teaches a classroom of seven boys, focusing on social/emotional skills and impulse control as well as behaviors. She will be getting married on July 12, 2017.
UCSB’s Teacher Education Program offers the Multiple-Subject, the Single-Subject (in five content areas), the Level I & II Education Specialist Moderate/Severe Teaching Credentials, and an M.Ed. degree. The programs are run as a cohort, with the elementary and secondary cohorts no larger than 60 students each, and the special education cohort no larger than 15. Candidates are placed in partner K-12 schools throughout the 9-month academic year, student teaching in the morning and attending university classes in the afternoon/evening. The Teacher Education Program is unique in that many of its faculty both supervise candidates in the field and teach university courses. The result is a cohesive, well-articulated program of study that takes candidates through each developmental phase of learning to teach.