Independence Charter School
Kaitlyn Palmer is a dedicated special education teacher with extensive experience in early childhood education. Currently, at Independence Charter School since August 2019, Kaitlyn specializes in kindergarten and 1st-grade special education, responsible for writing and implementing Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), leading IEP meetings, and providing direct learning and behavioral support. Prior to this role, Kaitlyn worked at Pocono Mountain School District, where experience included teaching 4th and 5th grades for one year and three years in kindergarten, focusing on case management, data analysis, and delivering academic interventions. Kaitlyn holds two bachelor's degrees from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, specializing in Special Education and General Education, as well as Education/Teaching of Individuals in Early Childhood Special Education Programs.
Independence Charter School
Independence Charter School (ICS) is a community-oriented public K-8 charter school located in Center City Philadelphia. At Independence Charter we provide our students with an intellectually stimulating and internationally focused curriculum emphasizing the arts, languages, and world cultures. Recognized nationally for our innovative global studies program, we are the only Philadelphia school to deliver an integrated curriculum that uses world cultures and second language acquisition to introduce and connect content disciplines. We strive to develop a bilingual, interculturally competent, high-achieving student body. All students at ICS study Spanish within two distinct programs: the Spanish Enhanced program, which includes 30-40 minutes of Spanish language instruction daily; or the Spanish Immersion program, in which students begin Kindergarten with 90% of their day taught in Spanish and 10% in English. By fifth grade that balance is 50/50. By the time they graduate, ICS students are bilingual and biliterate in Spanish. Independence Charter serves over 800 students from almost every zip code in Philadelphia. Students are randomly chosen through an annual blind lottery. Independence Charter was founded in 2001 by a group of parents and community members devoted to raising their families in Philadelphia. These founding members developed ICS’s mission and program, and many remain instrumental today as parents of current students and in founder seats on our Board of Trustees. Teachers ICS could not achieve its results without our energetic, talented, and caring teachers. They bring to life our approach to cross-thematic teaching and they embody our international focus. Our teachers come from Venezuela, Colombia, Spain, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Argentina, Guatemala, and the United States, to name just a few represented countries.