Sam Hilbert

Background

About Sam Hilbert

As a former classroom teacher, I hold a deep belief that every student, regardless of their background and ability level deserved the highest quality education. I wanted to show other educators that providing high-quality education to their students while also encouraging students' social and emotional growth was possible and achievable. To achieve this, I took on the role of an Instructor in the teacher preparation program at Texas Tech University. During my four years in this position, I fostered pre-service teachers' skills in providing high-quality education to students with a special education diagnoses. The students of my classes ended their time with me knowing that a student's unique needs were just as important as their educational needs. While working at Texas Tech, I started to become heavily interested in teacher preparation programs. I started investigating ways to improve these programs so that they reflected the current needs of the classroom. I obtained my Doctorate of Philosophy in Special Education from Texas Tech University with a primary focus on teacher preparation program improvements. I combined the experiences I gained from my time as a classroom teacher and my time as an Instructor to survey current classroom teachers regarding social-emotional learning training they received in their teacher preparation programs. I also sought recommendations from these teachers regarding improvements that they felt needed to be made in current preparation programs regarding social-emotional learning. In 2022, I worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Special Education at Southwestern University. In this role, I was able to implement the program recommendations regarding social-emotional learning and I continued to research improvements that need to be made in teacher preparation programs so we are producing the highest quality teacher candidate based on the needs of current classrooms. Currently, I work at Texas Tech University as an Associate Researcher for the Burkhart Center for Autism and Research where I continue my passion for helping teachers while also furthering the research areas of teacher preparation programs and Autism.