Although very soft spoken, Dr. Nicole Lofton has a lot of passion in her heart. The education professor knew she wanted to teach ever since she was in first grade because she enjoyed learning and playing school with her friends.
Born and raised in Chicago, Lofton attended a Catholic institution for both elementary and high school. She received her bachelor’s degree in elementary education at Roosevelt University in Chicago before attending National Louis University in Chicago to pursue her master’s degree in curriculum and instruction. She also attended Concordia University in River Forest, Illinois, to get her master’s degree in school leadership and Capella University, which is based in Minneapolis, to earn her doctorate in education with a specialization in K-12 studies. “I love learning,” said Lofton. “I mean, I still am learning constantly and I think effective teachers are lifelong learners.”
Lofton spent 15 years working in the Chicago Public School (CPS) system, first as a classroom teacher then as a reading specialist and a math specialist. She then worked at a charter school as a curriculum coordinator, then an assistant principal before she went back to CPS and worked in their central office for four years around teacher evaluation. She also worked for a year as a contractor with CPS in the office of early childhood.
Lofton also has prior experience teaching at other higher education institutions. She taught at Concordia University for seven years in the graduate teacher education department, helping students earn their master’s degrees in reading or curriculum and instruction. She also worked with undergraduates in the teacher education departments at Illinois State University and West Virginia State University.
Lofton said that she teaches college students because she wants to better prepare student teachers to work with children. “I think I do it mainly because I feel that it’s a way for me to have a strong impact in terms of educating K-12 children, so if I’m able to help their teachers to learn the appropriate skills and knowledge then they’ll be better prepared to help those students,” she said. “Also I feel that it’s just really hard for professors to give students everything that they need in order to be successful when they enter the classroom because there’s just so much that they need to know and be able to do. And because I realize it’s a problem I want to kind of help fix that issue.”
“One of the biggest things that I try to instill in the students that I work with is to be self-directed learners, because they can’t rely on their professors or their administrators to give them all the knowledge and experiences that they need to meet the needs of their students. So if they can learn to take advantage of the resources that are available for them to learn on their own, then they’ll just be that much more successful,” she added. Lofton also has advice for current education students: “And with that comes the ability to self-assess, so to figure out where your strengths and weaknesses lie and then to be able to develop a plan in order to strengthen the areas in which you need to grow without waiting for someone to point that out to you.”
Lofton said that she has encountered both enjoyments and “challenges” so far in Carlinville. She likes that there is little traffic in the area and she also feels safe. However, one challenge she has faced is that some community members are not initially open-minded.
While she has also enjoyed her time thus far at Blackburn, Lofton hopes to have a lighter load in the future. She currently teaches educational psychology, elementary math methods, reading methods and professionalism in education. Next semester, she will be teaching the second part to elementary math methods, adolescent psychology, language arts methods and diagnostic reading. Lofton sees herself changing various aspects of all the courses she will be teaching, including textbooks used and field experience systems. She adapts her lessons and syllabi to fit student needs and admits to over planning her own lesson plans but is always receptive to student feedback. “It’s been great, very busy,” she chuckled.
Lofton is married and has two kids of her own: a 16-year-old daughter named Kiersten who was homeschooled for seven years and now attends boarding school, and a 4-year-old son named Kaiden. Both children reside in Chicago with their father. Although she lives in Carlinville, Lofton makes weekly visits home.
Aside from her career Lofton enjoys reading, cooking, spending time with family and doing service-related projects. She volunteers at the Ronald McDonald House and writes letters to incarcerated youth. However, she does not have a lot of free time. A typical day for Lofton involves waking up at 2 or 3 a.m., grading students’ work and planning lessons until she has to leave for work. During the day she teaches classes and offers office hours at various times of the day before leaving at 4:30 p.m. She then heads home to eat, do laundry and continue grading and planning until she eventually falls asleep. “At one point, I was getting three hours of sleep a night, and sometimes not even consecutively,” she said. However, Lofton does not do work on Saturdays; she leaves those for spending time with family and tutoring elementary students in Chicago. She enjoys taking her children to museums, Six Flags and various restaurants.