Welcome to First Grade at Lerch Elementary School and Mr. Lerch's Class Website! I hope this site will be both fun and helpful to all of you!
About Your Teacher: Hi, my name is Mr. Lerch and I am your child's first grade teacher at Lerch Elementary School. I am a first year teacher. I am a graduate of Syracuse University (BA in Broadcast Journalism) and Le Moyne College (MA in Early Childhood Education and Special Education). Despite being a first year teacher, I bring a wealth of real world experience to the classroom and your kids.
Here's some background information about me. I worked for 5 years as a television anchor, reporter and producer at Newschannel-9. At Channel-9, I created "Friday Night Fever" a local high school sports hi-lite show, and "Athlete of the Week" a feature that showcases high school athletes that perform at high levels both on the field and in the classroom.
After a successful television career, I moved into radio as a Program Director and Sports Talk show host of Sportsradio 620 WHEN. I hosted "Bud and the Manchild" a daily drive time talk show for over 9 years. As host of the show, I had the privilege to interview many famous athletes ands sports legends and traveled to numerous sporting events around the world.
I was later was promoted to Program Director of Newsradio 570 WSYR and led the station when it won a prestigious "Crystal Award"for outstanding community service in the Syracuse area. I take great pride in receiving this award because we did an incredible job promoting and raising money for local charities. It was great to see how many less fortunate people we helpedin our own community.
I was also a web content manager and promotions director for the two radio stations, so I'm pretty computer savvy.
I'm married with an 8 year old son named Isaiah (he's the one on the left in the picture above). I love to spend time with my family, play golf, play baseball, attend sporting events, read books and watch movies. I'm also a big NY Mets, NY Giants and SU sports fan.
My Teaching Philosophy:
I became a teacher because I love children and I believe that an elementary school education begins with building strong foundations. Children need to develop basic life, social and academic skills in order to be successful as adults. School is a great place to develop these skills. I believe that school should be a fun, safe and caring place for your children. I will be creating lessons that both engage and educate your children everyday. The children will learn through lots of hands-on activities that will challenge them to think on their own. Mistakes in the classroom will be used to help your child grow and will be encouraged and not be made fun of in this class. I will do everything I can to get to know your child individually and to help him/her succeed in school. Since we have a very diverse group of children in this year's class, we'll have some specially designed lessons to learn about each others traditions and cultures. This will help make all of the kids feel more at home in our classroom community. Let's have a fun year and all learn together!