I am Desere Shuter. Welcome to my blog!
I taught high school math for several years until I became a mother and decided to stay home full time. The struggle of motherhood led me to my biggest parenting AHA moment, Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE). This philosophy allowed me to connect my experiences as a teacher, to my ongoing challenges as a mother. The next step was enrolling in one of the RIE parenting classes.
This is when I created my blog.
I want to share my aha moments with you.
Whether you are interested in applying RIE yourself, or you just want to follow my own struggles as I navigate this thing called motherhood, I am humbled to share my experiences with you.
I do not claim to have all the answers. And I am not RIE certified.
Instead I am here to showcase the several AHA’s on my way to raise children who have the characteristics that RIE founder Magda Gerber claimed is the result of respectful parenting (I hope). These are:
- Competent
- Confident
- Curious
- Attentive
- Exploring
- Cooperative
- Secure
- Peaceful
- Focused
- Self-initiating
- Resourceful
- Involved
- Inner-directed
- Aware
- Interested
A little more about me?
I grew up in West Hills, a suburb of Los Angeles, California. After graduating high school, I went to UCLA to study Mechanical Engineering. Midway I decided my dream of being Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) was unrealistic and I switched my major to Civil and Environmental Engineering.
After interning at one of the biggest oil service companies in Texas, I decided as much as I loved learning engineering, this was not a field I wanted to build a career in. Teaching just sort of fell into my lap, but it felt right at the time so I enrolled in an education masters program at UC Irvine.
The moment I stepped into a class, I knew that this was the right career choice for me. I enjoyed the challenges of teaching high school students. After my son was born, leaving him every day was too difficult for me, which I explain more here. And the rest… well follow my blog and find out with me.