Molly Heller ’21
Molly Heller ’21: “ If I stay a special education resource teacher, I will be the happiest girl in the world.”
“Caldwell gave me the foundation I need to be the teacher I am today. If I stay a special education resource teacher, I will be the happiest girl in the world.” – Molly Heller ’21
Molly Heller ’21 knew she wanted to be a teacher when she was in fifth grade. “I had this amazing teacher, and I told myself I wanted to be a teacher just like her one day.” Fast forward 10 years later and she found herself as a Caldwell University undergraduate doing her student teaching with that same teacher, in the same elementary school, in the same classroom. Learning from her mentor for a full year reinforced why Heller wanted to be an educator.
“The fulfillment is the student growth. To be able to work with these students from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, seeing what improvements they make all across the board, how they grow as students … and being able to make those bonds,” makes it all worthwhile, said Heller, a third-grade special education teacher in the Parsippany Troy Hills District. By engaging her students in small groups and one-on-one instruction, she gets to know them on academic and personal levels. That is a great joy, said Heller, who did a combined bachelor’s and master’s five-year program in education at Caldwell. She holds a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and social studies and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction along with a special education certification.
Heller’s Caldwell professors prepared her for teaching by giving her solid instructional design strategies and technology tools, offering up-to-date information on New Jersey’s student learning standards and policies, and providing good guidance and many field opportunities. “I saw kindergarten. I saw first grade, third grade, fifth grade, a little bit of second grade … I was able to work at different income levels … I was lucky,” said Heller. She was paired with quality educators. “I was able to learn a lot from them that I am able to apply in the classroom now.”
Heller was student teaching in March of 2020 when the lockdowns occurred. Like all teachers, she had to pivot and come up with strategies to engage the little ones virtually. She used her ingenuity and the tactics and plans her Caldwell professors had given her. She continues to use that foundation today, adapting her instruction according to students’ needs, taking the pedagogy content and the instructional design tools and applying them every day in her classroom. “Teaching post-pandemic is really the only format of teaching I know right now. My third-graders were in kindergarten when COVID first struck,” said Heller. To make up for any educational gaps, she works hard at building relationships with students and colleagues. That, she says, is what matters most and what will help students and educators overcome any difficulties.
Though Heller has a long-term goal of pursuing a master’s in special education, for now she is happy right where she is. “Caldwell gave me the foundation I need to be the teacher I am today. If I stay a special education resource teacher, I will be the happiest girl in the world.”