Welcome to my teaching blog! This is currently part of my Educational Technology class, but I look forward to using it in the future as a communication tool for students, educators, and potential employers.
For my final project in Educational Technology, I designed a standards-based, 9th grade English Language Arts lesson called "Finding Your Fairytale." I'll include the complete plan and some supplementary materials in this post. Lesson Plan This lesson applies the knowledge students learned about fairy tales into an online, interactive project. Students will analyze how fairy tales change over time and through different mediums by exploring the website, Finding Your Fairytale. They will evaluate which fairy tale characters resonate with them and why, will create an online profile on which they upload an avatar of themselves in character-appropriate costume that puts their own spin on the character, and will write about connections between the character's story and their own life. Finally, the class will review each other's work and will review each other's work and leave affirmative comments.
The purpose of this project is for students to see themselves in the cultural stories that resonate with them. They will consider how fairy tales teach problem-solving, resilience, courage, and independence, and are not just about the "happily ever after." They will connect their lives to a fairy tale that matters to them and reflect on how the tale teaches a life skill that they struggle with or have recently learned. Finally, this project teaches empathy and community-building by asking students to share their profiles with the class and respond to each other's projects in writing with compassion and humor.
I'm including the 3-part project prompts because these are the core of the lesson. I was originally inspired to design this lesson based on the incredible work done by Angie Kupper to create the site Finding Your Fairytale. The purpose of this site is for adults to see themselves in story, and to create a map for themselves to overcome a particular life challenge. The site has garnered lots of well-deserved attention and I hope others continue to peruse its magical pages. For me, I wanted to bring a project like this to kids, and make it something that connects mental health, story, and community-building.
My Kahoot! game is a fun way to review fairy tale history using one of my favorite ed tech apps. It's a great way to engage kids in teams using technology. But it's also just a wonderful old-fashioned way to teach them content! Sure, students come for the game element, but they stay for the learning. Or rather, the learning stays with them. I follow the game with an online quiz using Google Forms which automatically curates and grades this low-stakes assessment. Sure, I will review the answers for partial credit or misspellings, but it's also nice to give students feedback and not grade All The Things when my time can be better spent in other ways.
Finally, I recently discovered SeeSaw in an Adolescent Literature class. It's a good resource for journal entries and activities. Student responses can be shared with the class on a "whiteboard" space, or kept private so only the teacher sees it. The mechanics are a little clunky, but it works for now and I'm willing to use it until I find another product I prefer.
Overall, this lesson is a personal project combining many of my loves -- fairy tales, writing, empowering student voices, creativity, and building self-efficacy. I hope you enjoy!
This week, my Educational Technology assignment is to reflect on some question prompts and respond here. This is a great way to put together what I've learned this semester and consider how I might apply it in the future.
How do I envision a technology-rich classroom?
I envision a blended classroom. While my priority is in-person learning for the plethora of social skills we can learn from each other, I imagine using technology every day in and out of the classroom. As a future English-Language Arts (ELA) teacher, my priority is teaching reading, writing, communication, and language-oriented critical thinking skills.
While literature is a big part of ELA, I can also teach it through many tech-rich mediums such as audiobooks, films, apps, and website research. I intend to incorporate technology in presentation tools such as Google Slides or Prezi; reading tools for differentiated learners; collaborative tools such as book groups with other schools using video chats; gaming and testing systems like Kahoots or Quizlet; and virtual reality tools like Google Expedition.
What age group will I teach and what unique issues will this age range face regarding integrating technology in their education?
When I graduate, I will be qualified to teach grades 7-12 ELA. I'm most interested in public or free laboratory schools as this was my school experience. One benefit to teaching adolescents is that they typically have their first phone or tablet and are very socially-oriented, so there are many options available to teachers who want to maximize the technology experience.
Some of the challenges would involve keeping students on task and dealing with budgeting issues in the school system or personal lives of my students. I do not assume that every student has regular access to WiFi or a personal device to use outside the classroom.
To offset these challenges, I imagine assigning specific roles to each student for group work or other social experiences. I will also try to not assign homework that requires technology unless I'm sure every student has consistent access to the tech tools they would need.
What technology have I learned about that I believe enhances learning? What tech am I still wary of? What excites me and frustrates me about the technology?
While I use technology every day for my education and personal use, I still believe there are some limitations. Access is always an issue, and I want to keep this in mind when choosing tech for my classroom. Also, I haven't yet seen technology that masterfully walks students to the highest learning levels of Bloom's technology. I don't expect tech to do this -- after all, this is what I'm trained for -- but as a tool it's important to realize that technology doesn't replace the teacher or classroom experience for the highest order thinking skills.
I suppose I should say tech doesn't replace the teacher YET, but honestly I don't believe tech will fully replace human relationships in education. The more we learn about human development and psychology, the more we realize about the complex interactions happening between people on a subconscious or micro-level, and I see this as valuable for our development, even as artificial intelligence and virtual reality become increasingly sophisticated.
I will end with what excites me about technology, which is just about everything! Technology is an excellent tool for enhancing student engagement, motivation, the elaboration of learning, deepening understanding, and to explore parts of the world inaccessible to students given the reality of field-trip budgets. Technology builds bridges across disciplines and allows students to work on group projects asynchronously. I'm especially excited about developments in cloud computing, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and the varied options for differentiated learning. I look forward to my teaching adventures with technology!
First, I want flexibility in my classroom. Therefore, I focused on moveable workstation tables. I imagine every day utilizing the whiteboard and media screen (with ceiling-attached projector) and small group work. To meet this need, I organized the tables and seating so every student can easily see the screen and are already in small groups. Students will work on laptops/tablets at their tables so there's no need for additional computer stations. When we have a Socratic Seminar or a large-group conversation we can move the tables into a central "conference table" configuration. Or, if all students should be facing forward for an extended length of time, such as if they are watching a film, we can push tables into two long rows facing the screen.
Another quality of 21st century classroom design is furniture designed for differentiated needs. The white squares represent chairs but an exercise ball, wheelchair, or other seating option could just as easily replace a few traditional chairs. I also added two beanbag chairs in case students want to have a different seating option under the window. Moreover, student tables are more functional than rigid, individual desk-chair combinations. As a lefty, I always hated the right-oriented desks and always had to fight the other left-handed students for the single left-oriented desk or drag a second right-oriented desk up to my left side. Now we acknowledge so much additional student learning needs and should accommodate these needs in classroom design.
Technology integration and flexibility is essential. Tech in the classroom is here to stay, but the delivery method changes every decade. While computer stations were cutting edge 20 years ago, now most students have laptops or tablets and there's no need to leave space for bulky desktop stations. I already mentioned I imagine using a projector and screen and want to leave room for this. However, I want the screen to double as my whiteboard or smartboard.
Finally, a 21st century classroom should be light-filled. Many schools have a wall of windows built in to their design but it's not in every classroom. I designed a classroom with windows for natural light and put my desk, beanbag chairs, and a student table near the window for this benefit. Why put my desk under the window? Why not put a second student table? Because I'm highly responsive to natural sunlight and need to "recharge" at different times during the day when I'm not teaching. If I'm at my best in terms of mental health, then I can be my best self as a teacher. For classrooms that don't have much (or any) natural lighting, schools are utilizing more natural-ish lighting with lamps versus the harsh overhead fluorescents.
Overall, the key principle in my classroom design is flexibility. I want to have the ability to change as new research about student learning needs changes.
This week's Ed Tech focus is to learn about QR codes. The assignment is to create and embed a QR code for my blog here in this post. On my blog. Yes, it's redundant but it's practice! So, here's my blog QR code that I generated from the site goqr.me.
This week's Ed Tech assignment was to collect helpful teaching tips in Pinterest and embed these boards here in the blog. I've been using Pinterest for several years and have even been collecting education-related content on Pinterest. However, it helped to divide my generic "Teaching" board into three specific boards: "My Content Area: ELA," "My Classroom: Classroom Management," and "Student Activities." The biggest challenge was figuring out how to embed these boards in this blog.
Pinterest is an essential tool for me as a teacher. It helps me visually organize content articles, activities, and graphic organizer worksheets into one place. I often search for key terms that I've recently learned in my licensure classes and find a deeper understanding of the concepts by reading several short articles in one sitting and then applying it by exploring lesson plan ideas. I could also see my students using Pinterest as a visual organizing tool.
The strengths of this program are in curating content into visually pleasing "boards" or folders. I like scrolling through pictures that other people have "pinned." I'm drawn in to an interesting image rather than always going for the text-based title of an article. I also collect many pins for personal home projects and am inspired by the images alone.
The challenges of Pinterest used to be that I couldn't create subfolders. However, I just noticed today that I can add a subcategory to my pin, so perhaps that's changed. Also, it's difficult to find the most recent information about a topic. Instead, when I search for a keyword I may have to scroll through a lot of material I've already seen. I haven't played around too much with the settings but I'm wondering if there's a way to change that algorithm.
Overall, I love Pinterest and plan to keep using it for personal and professional boards. I find it as visually appealing as Instagram but easier to save and curate ideas I want to return to. It feels like a Google search with images, and I love that I can focus on what I want to search for in the moment. Pinterest is an excellent teaching tool and I plan to use it for my classroom.
In case you are interested in the teaching boards I made for this assignment, I've embedded them in a gadget on my blog home page. Happy pinning!
This week's Educational Technology assignment asked us to explore two companies offering free online classes -- Coursera and the Khan Academy -- and review the material for possible use in our classroom or for our personal lives.
First, a basic impression of what I noticed on the Khan Academy's site. The classes are easily organized into broad categories such as: Math, Science & Engineering, Computing, Test Prep, etc. There's a small section of Arts & Humanities but there are no literature or writing classes and only one class on grammar which is a very general overview that seemed geared toward older rather than young kids. I participated in an Art history class titled "Art of the Islamic World." I also scrolled through a few other options relating to history, government, or math. The videos and assessments were easy but interesting.
As an ELA teacher, I doubt I will ask my students to take a Khan Academy class unless we are reading a book that might benefit from the added context of history or government. While, of course, much of my work is interdisciplinary and does benefit from cultural context, there are other online options (Google Expeditions, for example) that I would turn to before the Khan Academy.
Moreover, for my students, including English language learners, I would prefer more classes about writing. Grammar is okay but is considered a lower-order concern. What benefits my students is learning about different forms of writing, about argument, about different audiences, about accurately summarizing other people's ideas before responding with one's own, and about knowing the purpose for writing in the first place (i.e. sometimes called the "so what?" question).
Finally, I'm still considering Khan's philosophy behind the Academy and his comments in an interview we watched in which he notes a discrepancy between the "product" parents believe they are buying their children when they send them to college (i.e. a highly respected credential that will have a return on investment in the job market) versus what college administrations believe they are selling (a content-rich, mastery-based, experiential growth opportunity that teaches the whole person as much about being a 'good' citizen as about practical content knowledge). He argues that this discrepancy can be corrected by more online credentialing.
I tend to disagree because to me, with the bias of an educator, I don't see the educational trend toward better credentialing as true progress. I'm concerned that even offering "certificates" or other credentials for completion of these free courses will not actually make a person competitive for a leadership role in a global market, but it will make them think they are competitive. What I see from students who go on to be global leaders is that they focus not on the acquisition of short-term credentialing but on the long-term cultivation of ontological skills. For me, a 21st century education involves daily practice of skills like creativity, collaboration, flexibility, resilience, problem-solving, and communication. I don't see this as the core mission of the Khan Academy.
On the other hand, Coursera offers free online classes in which learning is sustained over a longer time period. Their site is similar to Khan's in that there are a range of disciplines but an emphasis on STEM. Once again, no literature or writing classes. Therefore, like the Khan Academy, it may not be as useful for my ELA teaching as other resources.
Personally, my husband or I have taken a couple classes that took us several weeks to complete and we enjoyed the experience of these classes. I still remember some of the information I learned and I liked the interactive element. Something that Coursera does well is provide opportunities for deep learning. There are various formative assessments sprinkled throughout the lecture experience and the summative assessments move students up Bloom's Taxonomy.
As for whether MOOC's are the "wave of the future," I think they are the wave of a future for some people. I love that learning is free and designed by professional educators. I like that students who cannot attend traditional brick-and-mortar institutions for a variety of reasons have access to quality education.
Coursera also builds some of the 21st century skills that I believe are missing from the Khan Academy. As Daphne Koller mentions in her TED talk, students can organize in-person or digital study groups. Collaboration is encouraged.
I believe, like many, that when people put their heads together the ideas grow exponentially to the information at hand. We now know that the model of the "lone genius" is a myth. Many famous ideas from history were crafted from conversations in coffee houses or bars even though we still tend to only credit one person. Therefore, if MOOCs are going to be truly progressive, I believe that they need to be built with interactions in mind.
Koller notes that one thing Coursera, and many MOOCs, struggle with is higher-order learning. I agree. So much of my ELA teaching isn't about content but higher-order thinking. My assessments are designed around analysis, evaluation, and creating something new. I'm sure this is true in many fields.
So, for me, I want MOOCs to develop better ways to assess this higher-level or deep learning (the spatial geometry of education metaphors puzzles me -- is learning a fractal? Perhaps). The data that Koller and Ng are collecting from Coursera is incredibly useful, but I want to collect the hard-to-reach data that's qualitative, creative, and shows higher-order learning. I look forward to seeing how the research will evolve.
For this week's Educational Technology assignment I will explore an example of standards-based lesson plan as it applies to my grade range and subject area. In honor of Black History Month, I also want to tie my sample lesson into some young adult (YA) books I've recently read and would like to someday incorporate into my own curriculum. My English/Language Arts licensure will cover grades 7-12 and these books are appropriate for this age range.
To begin, I was inspired by the week-long Black Lives Matter at School site which is a "national committee of educators organizing for racial justice in education" (BLM at School, home page). Of course this learning opportunity will work for any time in the school year, but the committee focuses on a Black Lives Matter curriculum week in early February.
I pulled a sample standards-based lesson plan that I imagined tying in to the novels I loved. The novels from my own bookshelf include...
1. Out of My Mind, by Sharon Draper
2. Dear Martin, by Nic Stone
3. Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson
4. Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward
5. Copper Sun, by Sharon Draper
6. The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas
7. American Street, by Ibi Zoboi
There are so many more! Including, of course, anything by one of the most important American writers, Toni Morrison. I could fangirl on Toni Morrison all day! However, for this post, I chose novels that: a) involve a teenage protagonist, b) deal directly with the U.S. legal system (including Jim Crow laws, etc.), c) are award-winners, bestsellers, or teacher favorites, and d) tie into my sample lesson plan.
Additional lesson plans and resources are available by clicking the link for Lesson Plans on the home page menu and scrolling down to "Black Lives Matter in #PHLed: Lesson Resources Overview." This Google link takes you to an exceptional list of videos, activities, and learning opportunities all connected to CCSS. The lessons are organized by grade range and apply to all subject areas. It is worth checking out!
How do the standards play out in the design of this lesson plan? Since this blog post focuses on analyzing the standards I will break down each standard with an example from the lesson.
ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.1 This standard asks students to support inferences with textual evidence. It's the classic "show don't tell" of teaching literature -- show me how you drew this conclusion from reading the text by pointing to influential passages. Students practice this skill by reading an excerpt of "Destruction of Black Civilization" by Chancellor Williams and responding with discussion-based questions that draw on Williams' argument. Here's a screenshot from that portion of the lesson which I'm including because I'm taking the lesson out of order for this standards analysis post...
ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.2 I liken this standard to following a trail of breadcrumbs through the woods in that students will identify key textual details as part of a pathway to the bigger ideas. What are the themes of this text and how did you find the "breadcrumbs" to follow? This is illustrated by watching the video "Crash Course in Philosophy: What is Justice?" Students then discern the theme of justice by identifying the various types of justice presented here.
ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.7 moves students up Bloom's Taxonomy by evaluating the texts they've read in a diverse array of formats to tease out the deeper meaning. Students achieve this by connecting the perspectives they read and viewed about justice with what they know about the U.S. justice system. Here's a screenshot of some discussion questions following the video...
ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.1 and ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.2 takes students from what others say about justice to what they say in their own words. After the students demonstrate understanding of the various perspectives, they work in small groups to evaluate which ideas best fit the definition of restorative justice.
Finally, the culminating activity involves students creating original ideas about justice. This aligns with ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.4 in which students present their ideas in a new format, namely the "Restorative Manifesto" list of "practices, beliefs and values that are restorative in nature" ("Restorative Justice" lesson plan). I love this part of the lesson plan so I'll include it here...
There are a number of extension activities I won't go into here but look like an exciting way to bring these ideas to life.
Finally, how might I incorporate this into an ELA classroom using one of the novels from the above list? Let me count the ways...
1. Consider these perspectives of justice as they relate to the international tragedy of enslavement in Copper Sun. How did the African conception of slavery differ from the European practice? What are similarities and differences between indentured servitude and slavery? How are our current ideas about freedom and justice similar to and different from the 18th century? What forms of injustice do we deal with today? Are these practices of injustice part of one individual's personality or built into our system of laws and culture?
2. How do the novels Dear Martin and The Hate U Give directly confront the contemporary U.S. justice system? How could the core tragedies have been avoided? How do the personal lives of the protagonists elaborate our ideas about justice? Is the U.S. justice system a just system according to these novels? How do the character's experiences with this system relate to your own understanding of restorative justice?
3. The protagonists in Sing, Unburied, Sing and American Street are haunted by ghosts of those who unjustly died. How do we continue to be haunted by the specters of history? What unrest do these ghosts bring into the present situations? How are ghosts and supernatural monsters a metaphor for injustices that won't go quietly into the night?
4. Another Sharon Draper novel, Out of My Mind, deals with another form of injustice -- the incapacity to speak and move. When Melody's ability to communicate changes, how does her sense of freedom and justice change? Where do injustices lurk that we might not notice? How does our medical system and society ignore or silence bodies and communication patterns that are marginalized? How can mainstream voices/bodies/ideas be better at empathy and listening?
5. Finally, in the poetry of Brown Girl Dreaming, we see the power of place as it affects the culture of justice and freedom. What are the different attitudes of racial justice, fairness, and equality in the different places where Woodson lives? How is time rooted in place, with "traditions" of Jim Crow or other forms of racism ground into the soil? How do different religious practices share opportunities for spiritual and earthly freedoms? Are these practices constricting in other ways? How does poetry connect to other Black forms of expression, such as spirituals, rap and hip-hop, and spoken word performance? Is the poetic form constrictive or liberating for the ideas?
I hope you've enjoyed this excursion in thinking through standards-based lesson plans and the tie-in to Black Lives Matter at School and contemporary YA literature and will find some takeaways for your own lessons. I want to give special thanks to the Black Lives Matter at School committee for designing this deeply engaging material and making it available publically for educators and community partners. Thank you for your work!
I recently read Cece Bell's phenomenal graphic memoir, El Deafo, about her experience renegotiating school and friendships after her hearing was impaired by a severe childhood illness. It's a fabulous memoir that was the first graphic book to win a Newbery honor (Cece Bell "Books!").
El Deafo also addresses many of the issues kids face -- navigating a school system that doesn't meet your needs, desiring to fit in socially while cultivating individuality, and fostering healthy friendships. I look forward to reading it with my students some day.
In school, Cece struggles with her hearing assistive technology because it's clunky and visible and she's embarrassed by the way she believes it makes her stand out from her traditionally-hearing classmates.
Learning about Cece's experience with assistive technology inspired me to look into how the technology has changed over 40 years.
Before I get into the technology, I want to clarify the difference between deafness and hearing impairment because the terms are sometimes confused. I will use definitions from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) which is the resource that educators use. The IDEA legislation ensures all children receive an appropriately challenging K-12 education and helps determine educational services for which students may be entitled ("About IDEA").
According to IDEA, hearing impairment is "an impairment in hearing, whether permanent or fluctuating, that adversely affects a child's educational performance" ("Hearing Impairment").
By contrast, deafness "means a hearing impairment so severe that the child is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing, with or without amplification, that adversely affects a child's educational performance" ("Deafness").
It's important to note the differences between these two definitions in the IDEA legislation.
Cece is hearing impaired but not deaf.
In school, Cece uses hearing assistive technology called the Phonic Ear. This is a sound amplification system that reminds me of a Walkman radio (remember those?) with ear buds. Cece wears the system strapped to her chest, and her teacher wears a microphone that feeds sound into Cece's amplifier.
Here's Cece's illustration of the Phonic Ear device (Bell 39)...
In El Deafo, Cece describes feeling embarrassed by the size of the amplifier she has to wear under her shirt and the skin irritation it causes.
However, it's not all bad! Cece realizes that wearing the device gives her a unique advantage, her "superpower," which she eventually leverages in social capital.
So, how has the technology changed since the early 1980s? To begin, here's a new and improved 21st century belt-pack receiver offered on School Outfitters.
Ummmmmmm....... this looks the same? How is it different??
To answer that question, let's first define the system. This technology is called an FM system. Think of it as an FM radio channel for one person. Cool!
According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), an FM device like Cece's Phonic Ear would allow her to focus exclusively on the teacher wearing the mic and tune out irrelevant background information ("HATS for Children"). It would also help Cece hear her own voice so she could speak at the appropriate volume ("HATS for Children").
While the hearing assistive technology may look similar to the technology 40 years ago, there have been advances in the software of these devices.
As for the future of hearing assistive technology, there's an interesting development for schools called sound field systems. While these systems were designed for students with hearing impairment, researchers sound they actually benefit all students (Phonic Ear "Sound Field Systems"). Winning!
Sound field systems project a teacher's voice equally throughout the classroom using a series of speakers ("HATS for Children"). They also supposedly clarify voices that tend to mumble (Phonic Ear "Sound Field System").
And the best part? This system benefits all learners. Perhaps it's something we will implement in future auditoriums or concert halls!
Here we see the seed of a brilliant idea to support students with special needs blossomed into a revolutionary innovation that benefits everyone. This is why the research is so important!
I'm so grateful to Cece Bell for writing El Deafo, her exceptional graphic memoir. I appreciated learning about her experience with hearing assistive technology as it makes me consider ways to support students with new, creative technology. It also opens my eyes to a new perspective.
I encourage you to read El Deafo and reflect on how technology has affected your own educational journey.
This was my first experience using Prezi and for this initial presentation I designed a roadmap of my educational journey. I could imagine using this as a supplement to my CV and cover letter during a job interview process if I'm asked to provide materials that would help differentiate me as a candidate. I would also like to use it on the first day of class to introduce myself to my new students. I'm currently earning a license to teach English/Language Arts to grades 7-12 but imagined this Prezi as more suited to upper high school. Were I to teach middle school I would shorten it and add more pictures.
As for my experience using Prezi, it was a mix of fun and frustrating. The layouts are gorgeous, high-quality images and I appreciate the non-linear format for progressing through a presentation. I chose the free "Classic" version and noted there are still many options for adding creativity to the presentation.
On the other hand, I learned two frustrating factors for classroom consideration. First, Chromebooks and Prezi don't always play well together. I could *not* rotate images no matter how much I willed it to work. There was much Googling and fist-shaking as I tried to solve this conundrum. In the end, I was only able to use images that appeared right-side up from the moment I embedded them. This led me to use fewer images than I would have liked. I could imagine students being frustrated with this, especially as Chromebooks are common in schools.
Second, the movement between topic areas makes me dizzy. Does anyone else have this problem? When students would use Prezi in my classroom I would sometimes have to close my eyes during the transitions. Not good for grading a student's presentation!
Overall, my critiques don't take away from the enjoyable experience of designing something completely different for classroom presentations. Prezi offers a unique platform that's polished and (mostly) user-friendly. I enjoyed this adventure. Next time, I'll remember my dramamine.
While I am VERY NEW to K-12 teaching and learning, I've discovered a few blogs that are getting me up to speed on the transition from college-level teaching to middle and high school language arts. Here are three blogs I like in no particular order.
1. Language Arts Classroom
Lauralee Moss founded this blog as a means to provide practical tools for ELA teachers. What I've enjoyed is the blog site's organization by category: ELA, Classroom, and Education. The "ELA" category posts a range of resources from classroom tech, to various literary skills, to standardized testing. Each post is usually titled "How to..." or "Ways to use..." and, just like it promises, the content walks users through the steps to implement these tools in the classroom. The "Classroom" section is full of ways to design your classroom space, management & procedure options, and building a community in the classroom. Finally, "Education" has posts about the profession, from reviews of the latest books to handling angry parents. Overall, this blog is helping me build a toolkit of practical teaching resources to use when I begin to teach.
2. Class Tech Tips
Monica Burns is my new shero. While she's a tech geek extraordinaire, her mission is to foster a learning environment that prioritizes "tasks before apps" (also the title of her book). The goal is to use technology as a tool to enhance and deepen learning. While this blog covers the spectrum of K-12, the tech is easily adaptable to a teacher's learning goals and subject area.
3. Mindful Schools
This site is maintained by a collective of educators committed to "education, social justice, and mindfulness." While this is another generalist site that spans K-12, I find the resources are highly applicable to my age group of adolescents. After all, research shows that when adolescents receive training in personal skills such as self-awareness, mood regulation, stress-reduction, and empathy that these skill-sets translate into deeper learning. I'm invested in teaching the whole student, and with almost 50% of our public school kids scoring at least a 1 on the ACE test of childhood trauma, it's important to remember that what our students experience outside of school impacts their ability to learn in the classroom.
Greetings! I'm currently obtaining my Adolescent & Young Adult Language Arts-focused teaching license from Otterbein University, paired with a sprinkling of classes from Columbus State Community College.
Before returning to school for my teaching license, I worked at Denison University for 12 years, dividing my time between teaching and administrative work. In terms of teaching, I primarily taught First-Year Writing seminars on various topics, but my favorite class was on fairy tales and popular culture. I also taught gender studies and queer studies classes, and learned a great deal about multicultural education, teaching difficult subject matter, and the transformational power of sustained dialogue.
In my administrative capacity, I was the Assistant Director of the Writing Center for two years and specialized in tutoring English Language Learners. Before that, I helped establish and coordinate Denison's interdisciplinary campus theme for eight years. I originally came to Denison from Thurber House, where I learned about program management by coordinating their writer series.
All this is to say my experience has taught me that I love collaborative teaching, diverse ideas and people, and experiential learning. I also care about making students college or career ready, and believe my background in transitioning students to college-level writing can be reverse engineered to prepare younger students for this transition.
This is my first blog, and I look forward to this new adventure in cyberspace!
