Essential Questions:
Continue reading Teaching West African Dance: Authenticity Without Appropriation
Essential Questions:
Continue reading Do You See What I See? Do You See Me?: Exploring Identity in Second Grade
Essential Questions:
As I begin my eighth year at LREI, I realize that I’ve been thinking a lot the past few years about play. Last year, I came across Global School Play Day. Elena encouraged me to share this event with the Lower School and we had several classes participate. It was a lovely day for my class. The children engaged in decision-making, turn-taking, sharing, compromise, and practiced social skills such as initiating play and joining play all day long. I’m excited to participate in Global School Play Day again this year and hope many of my colleagues across all three divisions do as well. Continue reading The Role of Nature and Play in School
For me, the timing of this self-study has been fortuitous because it coincides with the redesign of learning support in the middle school, partnering with a new colleague, and additions to my role as a middle school learning specialist. Continue reading Self-Study as Redesign
My focus for my self study will be to commit myself to a year long portfolio with my students. Sometimes they will choose work based on where they are in the process of their work. Sometimes it will be work that I have assigned them. There will be times where I challenge the students to think about specific ideas. (What was something challenging? Something I have improved in. Something I still need to work on.) Continue reading Portfolios as Windows and Mirror for Learning
Through this project, I would like to explore how to make my assignments (homework and in the classroom) even more interactive and centered around listening comprehension and speaking in the target language in order to engage the students, reduce their anxiety (since it will not require a final product) and actually incorporate some mindfulness exercises. Reflections and discussions will take place in French. Continue reading Mindfulness Mission
For my self study, I’ve chosen to refocus on my own creative practice. During the self-discovery phase, I explored my passion for endurance sports — swimming, running and cycling — specifically. What I’ve learned, and what I teach my students, is that writing and producing films requires the same training, diligence and most of all, persistence as running a marathon, or finishing a hundred mile bike race. In my self-study, I plan to complete a re-write on a feature screenplay and work on production on a short personal documentary film. I hope to complete both projects, but will, at the very least, complete one of them. Continue reading Creative Practice
As a teacher with almost 30 years on the job, I worry that I will “fall behind”. I am concerned that my habits, practices, and perspectives are no longer relevant/effective. Students are now swimming in a different sea. Understandings of race, gender and privilege have all evolved and in some way been transformed. Social media has changed not only how students communicate, but also how they interact with the world. Since I’m not retiring soon, I have to find ways to avoid becoming the faculty dinosaur while at the same time preserving some of the reasons why I chose to become a teacher. Continue reading Staying Relevant
The focus of my self-study will be to increase my physical fitness, put plainly “to get back in shape”, documenting my work with a training log in the style that I hope my students will use, and reflecting on the process with the self-study process. Healing and preparing my body for the next 10 years of teaching and coaching was the initial idea, but I think that branching out into sports or races that I have little experience in, and forcing myself to compete in them would be helpful to the empathy that I hope to build through this process. Continue reading Being Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
Over the course of this self-study – and ideally beyond – I hope to push myself outside of my comfort zone and into areas of artistic practice and expression that have hitherto felt daunting or unattainable. I want to be able to apply the expectations I place on my students to myself with regards to my own practice as an artist. I want to generate work, A LOT of work and be open to and OK with the fact that much of it won’t be good, or polished or finished. I want to work fast and with less control. Continue reading Opening Up to Artistic Freedom
The questions that I explored this year have been a part of conversations that I have had with teachers over the past few years. When discussing topics with Elena I explored several different possibilities, but when I mentioned that I had been thinking about changing brain development, the role of technology, and the resulting impact on teaching and learning, she strongly encouraged me to look into this further. I have been curious about whether other learning specialists have also observed changes, and if so, if they have made adjustments to their teaching, and how they have adapted their methods and materials.
Continue reading Opening a Door
Imagine a school where its teachers and staff members are regularly engaged in passion-based projects in areas of expertise or a new found hobby. How would that change the school culture? Imagine if students were also given the opportunity to explore their own personal project ideas and they were integrated as meaningful parts of their schoolwork and curriculum. What are the challenges to achieve this? Continue reading Finding the Process and Project
To Kill a Mockingbird, 6/12
I was really fortunate to join some 8th grade students and a group of teachers to attend this masterpiece. What was profoundly striking to me was the relevance of this piece for us in 2019. Continue reading Rediscovering My Creative Enthusiasm
At the start of the year, or even really, before the year began, the questions that framed my self study were fairly general. I have been thinking about how over the past few years, my students have accomplished less in the course of a year. I wondered about my teaching, my approach, my materials, and I wondered about my students learning. Are students coming in with the same ability to learn and are they learning in the same ways as they have in the past? Do I need to do more because they are coming in with less? Do I need to change what I do because they need something different and how people are learning has started to shift in ways that I do not yet fully understand? Continue reading Attempting Change Where Change Was Most Needed
