What’s the best think I do in my district? That’s easy. I get the honor of working with teachers who constantly inspire me. Since they rarely brag about their accomplishments, I am going to summarize their awesomeness just from our interactions last week!
I have the pleasure of working with talented and dedicated teachers who are:
- Starting afterschool robotics programs where the student excitement is infectious
- Exploring flipped instruction in math to provide opportunites for real-life application during classtime
- Starting off the quarter, piloting a completely standards-based gradebook for the first time
- Rethinking Language Arts curriculum from a social justice perspective to promote student voice within thier community
- Advocating for students to be known as their unique individual selves rather than a disability label
- Providing Project-Based Learning Opportunities to Students to increase access and engagement
- Collaborating with their Grade-level to improve student outcomes
- Creating cross-district teacher-led professional learning in math
- Integrating technology-based formative assessment practices into secondary classrooms
- Providing amazing ideas for Common Core professional learning for families, paraeducators, and our substitute teachers
This is just a glimpse of the awesome things teachers are doing for students on a daily basis. I am constantly inspired by conversations with our teachers and their deep commitment towards student well-being and learning, while engaging in continuous learning themselves, and doing all this with a sense of humor and maintaining perpspective on what’s really important.
That’s the best thing I do in my district position as an instructional coach. I am privileged to work with a great group of teachers who are doing amazing things for kids everyday. I hope to convince more and more of them begin sharing their EduStories!
It is amazing what is accomplished through collaboration. Your teachers are creating and doing some amazing things. I would love to hear more about the ELA curriculum through a social justice perspective. Thank you for sharing and appreciating your teachers!
Hi Nicole! Thanks for your comment. Teachers everywhere are pretty amazing folks! As for my teacher who is rethinking ELA, they are at the beginning stages, recognizing the need for reading material to be more representative and relevant to their students and the need to provide more opportunities for assignments to be reflective of students and their community. Their plan right now is to start small, draft a unit plan, implement, and build upon that. Currently, it's an idea ready to take hold in this teacher's classroom.
I'm trying to encourage teachers to share their processes, stories, successes, and even failures more publicly through blogging, Twitter, etc. There is such a great community of teachers out there ready to support and learn from! I'll be sure to pass on your comment and interest in their project which will surely provide additional motivation and encouragement!