Outstanding Teacher – Celeste Roseberry-McKibbin

Celeste Roseberry-McKibbin

It is uncommon for a young adult to know what they want to do as a career. But to then be good at this job and love it is even more uncommon.

Outstanding Teacher Award recipient Celeste Roseberry-McKibbin says that she has been blessed, knowing at 19-years-old that she wanted to be a teacher. “I look forward to coming to work everyday. I love teaching and I love my students,” says Roseberry-McKibbin.

Roseberry-McKibbin has been teaching at Sacramento State for the past six years as an associate professor of speech pathology and audiology. She also works part-time for the Elk Grove School District as a speech therapist.

Roseberry-McKibbin says that she was shocked to receive the award and feels privileged to be acknowledged for her efforts.

Roseberry-McKibbin knew that she wanted to be a professor when she was a junior at Fresno State. An anatomy professor she had there made such an impression on her, keeping her interested and excited about the subject, that she knew teaching was what she wanted to do. “Before that I wanted to be a flight attendant, but my parents said no, but after that anatomy class I knew that teaching was what I wanted,” says Roseberry-McKibbin.

Interest in speech therapy came early for Roseberry-McKibbin. Having a severe lisp as a teenager, she had a speech therapist at the age of 14 and then again at 20. Roseberry-McKibbin believes that her personal experiences makes her empathetic to those who are seeking speech therapy but it is also what makes her lectures and discussions stand out. “I think that the stories I bring in from the field to my classes help with academia, but also prepare my students for the real world,” Roseberry-McKibbin says.

After working with real cases, Roseberry-McKibbin will bring the scenario to her class and ask them how they think she handled the situation. She says she feels solving the problems as a class is what will be extremely helpful in preparing them after they graduate. “My students will be faced with the same things I am faced with in the field, so I ask them for suggestions and set their thought processes to ‘Now what would you do?’” she says.

Roseberry-McKibbin says that her goals for her students also include enabling them to understand multi-cultural linguistic differences, something that she understands well having spent the majority of her childhood and teenage years living in the Philippines. “We live in a linguistically and culturally diverse world, so I believe it’s important to understand this from an international perspective because it is very different than simply seeing it from the U.S. perspective,” says Roseberry-McKibbin.

Past and present students tell Roseberry-McKibbin that she is a tough professor with “hard exams,” she says. However, it is rewarding when she sees past students a year or two later thanking her for making them work so hard.

“It just comes back to that real world perspective. I try to teach them the tools they will need,” says Roseberry-McKibbin.

The most valuable lesson that Roseberry-McKibbin hopes to pass on to all her students is to treat every client they have with competence, caring and compassion. Working in the Elk Grove Unified School District with elementary children, Roseberry-McKibbin says, is not always easy but it has an extremely important purpose. “I want them to realize that in this field you are making a huge difference in people’s lives. You can’t look at this job like just a paycheck,” she says. “Teaching university students and working directly with children are my calling. Those are the things I love.”