For the last four years, my professional life has been a roller coaster ride. Filled with ups and downs – scary bumps and exciting turns. I moved to South Florida July 2014 leaving my life and a job that I loved in Montreal, Canada. My family moved for new opportunities. It has not been an easy journey but four years later I finally feel at ease in my decision and feel happy once again.
It has been eight years since I was in my own classroom. I once taught MS/HS Social Studies and Media Studies. I have worked as a traveling teacher, learning coach and consultant. However, this year I had the opportunity to teach again. I took a 50% teaching position at a small independent school in Boca Raton Florida where I worked in the Maker Space with Lower School (Gr. 3-5) students and their teachers. We developed curriculum and the students learned valuable skills aligned with the ISTE standards.
It was important that this program was not stand alone – where students were dropped off in my room while the teacher went along with their day. This type of learning needs to be interdisciplinary, project-based making many curricular links. This is pedagogical work meant to develop digital literacy and digital fluency for both the teachers and students.
I really believe that the only way to truly transform a school stems from well developed and intentional professional development and strong leadership. The professional development cannot be a one-off, once a year session. It needs to include on-going coaching and support encouragement and love and a culture of risk-taking. Over the next few posts, I will be sharing my experiences and reflections this year from my time working in the classroom.
I will begin with some insight into my program. I met with students ten times a month, for forty-five minutes. My program focused on five units that were interdisciplinary. Some turned out better then others and there is definitely a lot I would change if I end up teaching this program again.
The program focused on one over-arching essential question with sub-questioning for each unit:
“How do you use technology to help improve learning and design thinking to solve problems?”
These questions acted as a strong foundation to begin. Each unit hit multiple ISTE standards for students. Keep an eye out as I share my resources and reflections from each unit!
Looking for more ideas for how you can help students make their thinking visible, amplify student voice and help students share their work? Check out our book “The Google Infused Classroom” now available on Amazon.
If you are looking for a hands-on FREE professional learning experience this summer. Check out our companion book study site.
