Reading has always been Beth Gilberg’s jam.
As the reading interventionist at Lincoln Elementary, Gilberg’s role is to aid students in learning how to read. Gilberg said when students come up to her and admit they don’t know how to do so, she encourages them by sharing how much she enjoys teaching those skills.
“I will say, ‘You know what my favorite thing in the world is? It is to teach people how to read, so we’re going to have an amazing year.’ And we do,” Gilberg explained.
Growing up, both of Gilberg’s parents were educators. Her mom returned to full-time teaching when Gilberg was a fifth grader and let her help in the classroom by doing tasks like laminating or cutting out things. As she got older, Gilberg was able to help some of the students, and the look in their eyes when they understood something has stuck with her since.
Gilberg has been with Norman Public Schools for 23 years and is in her seventh year at Lincoln. She first started as a substitute teacher for Roosevelt Elementary before getting a full-time job at the school. Throughout her time with the district, Gilberg has worked with the “best people.”
“Having a principal that is supportive makes all the difference in the world,” Gilberg said. “I have been so lucky in my career to work for excellent principals. Here at Lincoln, I have the best of the best in Olivia Dean. She’s super supportive. Anything we need or if I come up with some crazy idea, she says, ‘Yes, let’s do it.’ And I just love that she’s given us room to grow.”
“Just this morning, I had a conversation with a colleague in the hallway passing by, but it gave us the best ideas,” Gilberg continued. “Now I want to go home and research and learn more and try it. Having the time to have conversations with people just really fills my bucket and makes me want to keep going and try new things, and this environment here is just so supportive of that.”
In addition to working with great people, Gilberg said her students make her excited about her job every day. One aspect she loves is that she works with kindergarteners through fifth graders, teaching a variety of lessons on any given day.
“One minute I’m working with fifth graders and we’re decoding four-syllable words, and then next I’m pulling kindergarten and we’re working on trying to put three sounds together into a word,” Gilberg explained.
Gilberg grew up in Illinois and attended Illinois College. Her path brought her to Norman when her husband, Tim, started graduate school at the University of Oklahoma. Although Gilberg expected Norman to just be a stop of the road, the family settled in the community. The Gilbergs’ 12-year-old son, Barrett, attends Longfellow Middle School.
“I got here and I just fell in love with the town, and I just fell in love with the district,” Gilberg shared. “I said, ‘I don’t know that I can find another place just like this. I want to be here.’”
The Gilbergs love going camping and hiking, and especially enjoy visiting national parks. The first major one they visited was Rocky Mountain National Park, and Gilberg added that they have also been to the Grand Canyon and several of the parks in Utah and are looking forward to traveling again this summer. They also like playing board games, and Gilberg often tricks her students into reading without them realizing it by having them play games like “Sparkle Kitty,” where there are multisyllable words to match with other words and colors.
One of Gilberg’s passions is making sure that over the summer, her students have access to good, quality books. Each month, Gilberg makes a trip to the Feed the Children Teacher Store in Oklahoma City to get free books for her students. At the end of the year, the school has a book giveaway, and this way, students who may not be able to get to the public library often over the summer will still have books to read. Gilberg said she is proud of this because the kids will come back in the fall and tell her that they’ve read during break. Collaboration is important to Gilberg, so she has also paired up with her colleagues on other projects to best serve their students.
“My big thing is it's always been not me but we,” Gilberg stated. “I'm huge on collaboration. I think it's so important to collaborate with other people. I know that I can make a difference with a kid, but if I can find colleagues with a similar mindset, and if we all work together, our impact is so much bigger.”