About Me
Hello! As you already know, my name is Amanda Fontana, and I received my Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) degree at Texas Woman’s University in the fall of 2014 and received my Bachelor of Science degree at the University of North Texas in the fall of 2011.
My path to this career choice has been an amazing journey, and I am extremely grateful to be where I am. I come from a family of teachers, and throughout my childhood, I always wanted to be a teacher. As I progressed through middle and high school, I played in orchestra, excelling at the cello, and I was convinced that music education would be my career. Out of curiosity, during my senior year of high school, I took a CTE class called Individual and Family Life that would drastically alter my career decisions. I continued on the music path, however, after being accepted into and finishing one semester in the UNT College of Music, I realized I wanted music to be more of a hobby than something I wanted to do for my career.
Thinking back to that class in high school and how much of an impact it and especially the instructor made on my life, I decided to change my major to Human Development and Family Studies to pursue a career teaching; however, after hearing a lot about nonprofits and becoming extremely passionate about working with families directly, I decided to take a detour before teaching in a public school. During my last semester of college, I was an intern at a nonprofit organization called The Parenting Center in Fort Worth, Texas, and I was fortunate enough to be hired on full-time before my December graduation. During my three years there, I helped found a new federally-funded healthy marriage program called the Empowering Families Project and took on many different responsibilities. After working there for two years, I decided that I wanted to return to school to finally pursue my true passion of teaching. The next year was spent continuing to work at The Parenting Center, while taking on the challenge of graduate school at the same time.
One of my biggest goals is to inspire students to follow their dreams and pursue their passions, just like my high school instructor did for me. Because of her, I completely changed my career path, and I could not be happier!