Describe something that you’ve learned as a result of your Kenan Fellowship that will change how you teach next year.

We’ve had students for one week now and I’ve garnered support from four of my colleagues to implement components of my Kenan Fellowship project.  I’m so excited to begin designing lessons with my third grade education partner Jenny.  Friday afternoon I showed her class the iSmartphone video to introduce the four countries that her students will be representing, China, Japan, Australia, and Mexico. Next week the students will be actively engaged in learning about their countries by collecting data and reading informational text about their countries online and from books in our school library.  In a couple of weeks we will be introducing our classroom economy!

Pettus World Bank will begin operating with a bi-weekly payroll, with classroom jobs that mimic roles in responsibilities in our communities.

I can’t wait to show Jenny’s class the video of Miss Jenny’s Pickles

Miss Jenny’s Pickles – Going Global!     that I located during my research of North Carolina in the global economy at the Center for Globalization, Governance, and Competitiveness at Duke. I will be introducing Jenny and her students to the amazing website created by CGGC listing all of the major areas of North Carolina’s role in the global economy.  I’ve found some amazing resources, actually kid friendly resources, during my research and have a mountain of materials to share when I’m planning with Jenny!  My goal is to capture the positive impact these lessons have on student learning in Jenny’s room and then “advertise” our work in hopes of having other teachers join me to spread the global awareness piece and also teach economics through children’s literature.

My fifth grade education partner and I have prepared math lessons together and will soon begin preparing “flipped” lessons for her class.  I am so grateful for all the resources that were brought my way this summer at NCCAT. I can show her the Moodle links and will allow her to be a part of the creation so our mutual collaboration can transform her daily instruction.  It is a work in progress but the key word in this statement is “progress!”

Our school counselor and our teacher/librarian are both excited to use some of the children’s literature I found during my fellowship!  It’s only week one and I find myself anxious and excited all at the same time.  I’m anxious about the fast pace that we all run to keep up with the curriculum and don’t want to be absorbed into just “meeting the needs of the curriculum” but would rather transform the delivery of the curriculum.

I’m excited because at our 2013-2014 Staff Kick Off, our amazing principal introduced our “Connecting the Dots” theme for this school year!  The three D’s! Define, Design, Deliver!  Those terms have helped me to introduce the design and deliver concepts of my fellowship while I’m defining the content with my colleagues.  I’m on my way to a successful school year of implementation! My goal is to stay true to the course of transforming the way we design and deliver instruction by spooning out, little by little, the huge amount of resources and knowledge I’ve gained through my fellowship work this summer.

As you prepare for the 2012-2013 school year, describe how you envision your summer experience impacting your students.

When I consider all that I learned this summer and how I will distill and apply even a portion of that learning, I have a sense of shire excitement and a sense of how will I convince other teachers to participate with me. As a Math Coach I work with all the teachers in our K-5 school.  My role is to work with teachers to enhance math instruction.  Part of my project can be connected with math but it aligns more with the social studies standards. So I’m trying to balance both.

Before school started I had a meeting with two of my teacher friends.  We were meeting to discuss our plans to support teachers in flipping lessons using the Teacher Leadership Grant money from Wake Education Partnership.  I didn’t have time to share all that I’d learned about flipping at this particular meeting but I did share all the books I’d purchased over the summer. I found a wonderful resource during my fellowship at the North Carolina Council on Economic Education, Teaching Children Economics Using Children’s Literature. My librarian teacher friend, wrote down all the titles and said that she would love to teach my lessons!  My school counselor friend, said that she would also like to use some of the books I shared with the economic principals because she saw the positive character message in the stories as well.  I hit a Home Run on the first time out!

I guess I’ve learned from that positive experience that if I take the time to appeal to the content of the individual teachers that I work with rather than pushing my own agenda they will see the value and make it their own because it’s great material and I won’t have the be the “sales woman” for my fellowship lessons.

Here’s to a wonderful, hopeful, impactful year of balancing math instruction, flipping classroom lessons, and integrating my Kenan Fellowship project into the curriculum with accepting, excited teachers!  I’m confident this will be successful!