NATHAN VALDEZ

I am a special education major and music studies minor. I first started my studies at UTSA as a music major; however, I recently changed it to Special Education because I realized my real passion for how educators teach a variety of student audiences. Before college, school was not always the easiest for me because I would occasionally struggle to understand traditional pedagogical methods. Despite this, I learned how to meet and excel the standards in my studies by implementing alternative methods. I know there are people like me that occasionally struggle with school but have not learned how to learn in their unique way. Therefore, my greatest passion in life is to understand research alternative pedagogical methods better. Furthermore, since I am starting my journey as a researcher, I am hoping to be able to travel across the world to multiple conferences.      

Research:

I want to focus my research on alternative pedagogical methods because of the current educational system. Teachers are only required to have 70% of their students passing standardized tests. Therefore, I want to be able to change this system by researching an educational paradigm shift where educators take approaches from special education into the mainstream classroom.