About Me

Hello, my name is Waneta Hebert (pronounced Wah-Nee-Tah A-Bear, formerly Carter) and I am an Instructional Designer.

Education

I have my Bachelor of Science in Integrated Language Arts Education from Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. I briefly flirted with a second major in Psychology, but I never did finish that degree. I took the psychology courses that I wanted to take and moved on.

I also hold a Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction: Learning, Design, and Technology from the University of Houston. I also completed three graduate certificates at the same time: Online Teaching and Learning, Designing and Developing Educational Multimedia, and Designing and Developing Educational Graphics.

I am now pursuing a Doctorate of Education in Instructional Systems Design and Technology from Sam Houston State University, a statement equally exciting and terrifying.

Instructional Design

In Spring 2017, I started my master’s program with CUIN 7390: Instructional Design, and it changed my life. I chose the Learning Design and Technology program to learn more about educational technology with the goal of one day becoming an educational technology coach. I had never heard of “instructional design” as a career before. That class opened a whole new world of possibilities to me and set my career on a new path.

After completing that degree, I took two years to consider my next career steps before deciding to start my doctorate in Instructional Systems Design and Technology. At the start of that program, I jumped on the opportunity for an instructional design internship with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in the Training and Leader Development Division. I thought I’d fallen in love with instructional design during my master’s program. My summer of working with designing online courses in Articulate was incredible and showed me that this is a career move I needed to make.

Now I am an Instructional Designer at Houston Community College.

Education and Teaching

I was an English teacher for nearly seven years, first in high school, then in middle school. My teaching focused on the English I and Reading STAAR tests. I also spent two years as the English Department Chair, leading a department of about 15 English teachers. Even though I am no longer in a public school classroom, I still consider myself a teacher and always will.

I am also an adjunct lecturer at the University of Houston where I have the privilege of teaching an undergraduate educational technology class. This course was a face-to-face course before the pandemic and has been a synchronous online course since Spring Break of Spring 2020.

Personal

I grew up in small town Ohio and graduated in a class of 83 students. It was a much smaller world than the big Houston city where I am now. I worked the regular teenager jobs – washing dishes at a diner, working the register at a convenience store/gas station, taking orders at a pizza shop, etc. I was lucky enough to take a couple of college classes while a senior in high school, and I graduated Salutatorian of my class (pesky math classes brought my GPA down just enough that I wasn’t valedictorian).

I went to college at Kent State University, a relatively large school about an hour away from home. At the end of my senior year, Kent put on what they called Teacher Interview Day – basically a job fair specifically for new teachers. The idea was that even if we didn’t get a follow-up interview or a job offer, we would get the experience of talking to administrators and answering interview questions. It worked quite well for me, as I was able to impress a math content specialist from Texas, who then set me up with two days of interviews for high school English positions all over the school district during my Spring Break, and those interviews ended with my first teaching job offer.

A couple months after graduation, I packed up my little VW Bug and my mom packed up a rental van and we trekked across the country to my new home. I lived in an apartment for a year before I purchased my home just outside Houston.

On November 19th, 2016 I married my best friend, a fellow teacher I met in that first job here in Texas. We have a rescue zoo of four cats and two dogs, and I think it’s safe to say I’m living happily ever after here in Texas.

Feel free to contact me with any questions (or offers of free coffee)!