Londa Bohl – Third/Fourth Grade Teacher

Londa Bohl joined our team of teachers in August 2010.  Prior to her arrival at M.D.C.S. Ms. Londa enjoyed a long and successful career as an entrepreneur.  From 1984 to 1996, she owned and operated a chain of small quantity and highly personalized printing boutiques.  Ms. Londa developed her signature operation, Quicker Than Ink, Specialty Printing Boutique, as a franchise company where she built and sold her printing boutiques in the Toronto, and Southern Ontario markets in Canada.  Ms. Londa sold her company and returned home, to Western North Carolina, in 1996, and joined the Merrill Lynch team of Financial Consultants.  Working closely with her clients and helping manage their portfolios was a rewarding and exciting career.  But after turning 50, she realized the window of opportunity was narrowing and her passion for teaching was calling her name.  Therefore, Ms. Londa retired from the securities industry in 2007, and enrolled in college as a student and earned her Master’s Degree in Elementary Education.

As an elementary teacher at M.D.C.S., Ms. Londa believes in the whole child, as a unique individual, and unlike anyone else in the classroom.  Therefore, her curriculum is alive with varying activities at varying levels of engagement and challenge with each child in mind.  She fully respects the child as a social being and as a result integrates peer-to-peer, and peer-group learning activities with lots of hands-on experiences.  Ms. Londa can often be heard explaining to her students that, “We learn by doing.  So roll-up your sleeves and get to work!”  At the same time, she is an ardent supporter of, and believer in concrete routines the students are aware of and can rely upon, classroom organization and order, respectful behavior, and providing the students with the support necessary to learn from mistakes. Ms. Londa’s theory of learning is firmly rooted in her belief that children learn best from their own mistakes  Therefore, she challenges each student based on their unique skill-set while encouraging them with love and patience to persevere to finally experience that, “sweet taste of success,”  which is the result of their hard work.  Almost miraculously and usually without exception, Ms. Londa’s students are then hooked on their belief in perseverance and not being afraid of making mistakes, but rather embracing what can be learned from mistakes for the purpose of finding success.

But, at the end of the day, regardless of Ms. Londa’s theories of what works best to support learning in the intermediate level classroom, she’s learned that her dear students learn best when they think they’re playing.  Therefore, striving to create enjoyable experiences both inside and outside of the classroom while implementing curriculum is what Ms. Londa strives to achieve each day in her “learning lab” with all of her students in all of their different shapes and sizes.