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Molder of Dreams

Takeaways I feel like I resonated with his ideas about relationships. It's easy to get sidetracked by curriculum, standards, and teacher drama, but it's important to remember who you're working for: the students. Yes we all have a passion for our content areas, but teaching K-12 is about finding ways to encourage our students to care about our content. In some classes or with some material, the substance is engaging enough for some students, but in more polarizing environments, it takes more effort. Poem Sometimes I do feel like a molder of dreams because one of my favorite parts of my job is helping students identify their passions and coming up with ways for them to act on them. Teacher Impact Mz. Dennis and Ms. Valesano had the biggest impact on me in middle and high school, respectively. They encouraged me to follow my passions, found new ways to bring me into the conversation and activities, and were knowledgeable in their content areas. Coincidentally, they wer...
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Greatest Takeaway from the Spring Conference

Honestly, not to sound arrogant, but what I took away from my Spring Conference this year was my self-confidence. I was prepared, planned a full and engaging lesson, didn't pontificate to the room, and left enough room for questions at the end. I received many compliments about my Action Research; specifically, that they enjoyed reading my paper because it flowed very well, was clear and concise, and they enjoyed my out-of-the-box methods of data collection. They also told me they found my session activities applicable to a large variety of situations in their own classrooms, and that's what I was hoping for. We were also able to be flexible and customize the lesson based on what kinds of discussions the attendees wanted to have. At the end of the session, my facilitator said it was clear I knew what I was doing and he stated that my session was the fastest-paced afternoon session he'd ever been in. I believe that is because I approached the situation like I approac...
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Teach Learn Lead Application

I attended a session on personalized learning, and I was intimated by just how scheduled and organized her school was that she could offer several different sessions at different levels all in one three hour block. My school is not structured that way, plus I didn't even know where to begin that mess, so I just took some of the basic ideas and implemented them in one lesson. In LA 9 we're reading Animal Farm  by George Orwell and I always do a lesson on the Russian Revolution since it's the whole point of the book. In the past, I've played a video and given all students the same questions, without any scaffolding. I always have some students who succeed and some who give up/don't start because they have such little background knowledge that it's too much for them to handle. This year I'm taking a more personalized learning approach. Students will choose their pathway to success - a Youtube Video or an Informational Text. Youtube Video This pathway c...
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ethics

to remind myself... all students deserve equity all students should be held accountable staff shouldn't be terrible staff should be professional adults should be able to make decisions students should feel comfortable and supported by their school
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super extravagant leadership commentary

Someone from our PBIS team decided to spontaneously get upset and worried that we don't have anything to present to the staff at our next staff meeting. I thought she was asking for ideas we could do for our next extended planning room lesson to the students, so I gave some good ideas. An administrator shot them down because they didn't like that I suggested they need to hold students accountable. long story. anyway. the PBIS lady kept asking what we should do and i finally just told her that i'm not doing anything half-assed. She agreed and calmed down. I swear to god it's like some staff members run around like chickens with their heads cut off until someone tells them what to do. Why can't people think for themselves?????????????????? leadership goal = going great?
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Radical LEAP: Leadership Goal

My goal was originally to use my role in PBIS to help unite the staff. That backfired. So then my goal was to back off from doing PBIS work. That didn't work because I care too much. Right now something I'm working on, which can be applied to my role in PBIS as well as my position as a teacher, is I am using my strategic, achieving skills to learn how to disseminate important information to staff and students efficiently. I have been in communication with a representative from my District Comunications Department about how to advertise for school-wide events on the District website, the school website, as well as Facebook. She was super helpful and now I finally have a concrete list of steps to take to achieve my goals of distributing important information in an efficient way while actually reaching MORE people instead of less. I strongly believe what I'm doing right now, and my research, should have been conducted by our Activities Director and not me - a random clas...
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Resource Rant Application

I needed to find a digital copy of the graphic novel March: Book One by Rep. John Lewis. I used Megan's suggestion, Epic!, to try to find it. I created an account and searched through the website. While I did find some short non-fiction texts about Civil Rights, I soon learned that that service did not host March: Book One  by Rep. John Lewis. I did some more research and actually found it for only $4 on ComiXology, an Amazon-owned company that specializes in digital comic sales. While I didn't find Epic! helpful or useful in my content area, I think there's a good chance it could be applicable in our EL classes.
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