Student Success Through Choice & Tech Home Learn More Inspiration About the Author
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I received both my Bachelor of Arts degree (2000) and Single Subject credential in English (2002) from California State University, Chico. Upon completing the credential program in 2002, I moved to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, where for the next seven years I taught 7th-11th grade English at a private school. During this time, I immersed myself in the Mexican culture and became bilingual in Spanish. In 2010 I began teaching English at Calistoga Junior/Senior High School in the Napa Valley.
In addition to wanting my students to become proficient in reading and writing, I also seek to instill qualities and skills that will enable them to become positive, independent, and successful contributors to their communities after high school. I recognize that literacy takes many forms in the 21st century, and my goal is to adapt my teaching to promote technical literacy while fostering creativity in an engaging and rigorous academic environment. |
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Looking Through the TPACK Lense
The first step in my TPACK journey was to try to understand the different aspects of this framework. This understanding is an important part for any teacher who aims to address the 21st century needs of students. The three parts of the TPACK include, in reverse order:
Having gone through a single subject teaching credential program, I mastered my content of English back in 2002. Given that I am not a science teacher, nothing about my content really changes. Although pedagogy does change and evolve, I’ve been teaching long enough to see the trends and those strategies that are tried and true. Because of all of this, I have been a confident teacher. Enter technology.
Aside from using technology in my personal life, my use of it was quite limited. Before I entered this masters program, the only time my students were expected to use technology in my class was to share a Google doc for essay collaboration. This year was really the first time that I felt the need to force myself into this change. When I’ve participated in staff development where tech tools were introduced, I essentially shied away and had no real interest. As a result of my willingness to move forward, however, and thanks to this Innovative Learning program, I have grown immensely, and dare I say, my students have, too.
This year I have spent a great deal of time introducing my students to digital tools that would allow for creativity, engage them in new ways, and even asked them to explore tools to share with the class. I’ve become comfortable taking risks, often times in front of and alongside my students, but I’ve accepted the fact that it’s the only way. Unlike content and pedagogy, technology doesn’t feel like something that I can ever master, but what I will attempt to do is continue to explore and implement new digital tools in order to make learning relevant for my students and their futures outside of my classroom.
The first step in my TPACK journey was to try to understand the different aspects of this framework. This understanding is an important part for any teacher who aims to address the 21st century needs of students. The three parts of the TPACK include, in reverse order:
- content knowledge- the knowledge of the subject matter being taught
- pedagogy knowledge- the knowledge of teaching methods and strategies that lead to learning
- technology knowledge- the knowledge of technology tools that enhance learning and engage students
Having gone through a single subject teaching credential program, I mastered my content of English back in 2002. Given that I am not a science teacher, nothing about my content really changes. Although pedagogy does change and evolve, I’ve been teaching long enough to see the trends and those strategies that are tried and true. Because of all of this, I have been a confident teacher. Enter technology.
Aside from using technology in my personal life, my use of it was quite limited. Before I entered this masters program, the only time my students were expected to use technology in my class was to share a Google doc for essay collaboration. This year was really the first time that I felt the need to force myself into this change. When I’ve participated in staff development where tech tools were introduced, I essentially shied away and had no real interest. As a result of my willingness to move forward, however, and thanks to this Innovative Learning program, I have grown immensely, and dare I say, my students have, too.
This year I have spent a great deal of time introducing my students to digital tools that would allow for creativity, engage them in new ways, and even asked them to explore tools to share with the class. I’ve become comfortable taking risks, often times in front of and alongside my students, but I’ve accepted the fact that it’s the only way. Unlike content and pedagogy, technology doesn’t feel like something that I can ever master, but what I will attempt to do is continue to explore and implement new digital tools in order to make learning relevant for my students and their futures outside of my classroom.
Lasting Learning from the Innovative Learning Program
Aside from the financial incentive offered by NapaLearns, one of the reasons I enrolled in this program was to be able to learn, explore, and apply new information in my classroom on my own terms. There is nothing worse than district-mandated anything. I am trying to become the teacher who possesses the skills I hope to encourage in my students: purposeful, curious, innovative, and reflective. In all honesty, when, as part of this program, I was asked, "What are you passionate about in education?" I internally shrugged my shoulders. I love teaching, and I love seeing my students grow, but I don't spend my nights thinking about my job like some teachers do, and there's nothing wrong with that. I simply want to learn to do what I can to help prepare my kids to be successful, while at the same time, continuing to remind them that, ultimately, their success or failure is 100% up to them. My job is to help facilitate learning by creating a safe, rigorous learning environment. While I acknowledge that there are gaps in access to pretty much everything under the sun, I firmly believe in the adage "Where there's a will, there's a way." We all get out of life what we put in, and education, work, and relationships are no different. Hard work, effort, persistence, tenacity, and drive are traits that are not only to be encouraged, they are to be demanded. The sooner students understand this, the better off they'll be.
I will continue to explore and introduce new tools in my classroom, encouraging student voice and choice as often as possible. I will continue to make mistakes, learn from them, and do things differently the next time. I will expect that my students do the same.
Reflections Throughout The Journey
After our class last night, wherein we presented our digital mind maps on the SITE model via sites like Coggle and Bubbl.us, I was very impressed with what I saw my colleagues create. Although I acknowledged the fact that I was a tad intimidated by the tools, and therefore didn't master the assignment, I felt inspired to not just "lean into" incorporating technology in my classroom, but rather to dive right in, and soon. So I did! As a pre-writing strategy for my students' So What? posters (see images on this page) for the novel The House on Mango Street, I decided at 6:30 a.m. that today they would work collaboratively on their own digital mind maps. After introducing the overall poster assignment requirements, I asked students what they knew about mind maps. To my surprise, not one of my 98 students knew how to define it. However, when I asked them to define brainstorm, most knew, so I began using the terms interchangeably to get them to associate the two. Next, I told them that I, too, was a student who had recently been tasked with creating this product and then displayed my sample. There were whispers among the students about how "cool" it looked, so then I decided to show them a few more models that my classmates had done (I hope I didn't violate any law or code in so doing!), and students noted the similarities and differences they saw.They realized that all of the samples contained the same SITE components, yet the style, form, and even amount of information varied from sample to sample. From there, student pairs selected from the following sites: Inspiration, Coggle, Bubbl.us, and Mindomo. They created text boxes for the following concepts in the novel in preparation for completing their collaborative posters: conflict, theme, character traits,and figurative language. In all honesty, I feel incredibly proud of myself for recognizing an opportunity to insert technology and jumping right in. I thought outside the box! I felt invigorated by doing something differently. Even one of my 1st period students, whom I have in 7th period READ 180 commented, "Mrs. De La Cruz, you were happy this morning!" And I was!
After our class last night, wherein we presented our digital mind maps on the SITE model via sites like Coggle and Bubbl.us, I was very impressed with what I saw my colleagues create. Although I acknowledged the fact that I was a tad intimidated by the tools, and therefore didn't master the assignment, I felt inspired to not just "lean into" incorporating technology in my classroom, but rather to dive right in, and soon. So I did! As a pre-writing strategy for my students' So What? posters (see images on this page) for the novel The House on Mango Street, I decided at 6:30 a.m. that today they would work collaboratively on their own digital mind maps. After introducing the overall poster assignment requirements, I asked students what they knew about mind maps. To my surprise, not one of my 98 students knew how to define it. However, when I asked them to define brainstorm, most knew, so I began using the terms interchangeably to get them to associate the two. Next, I told them that I, too, was a student who had recently been tasked with creating this product and then displayed my sample. There were whispers among the students about how "cool" it looked, so then I decided to show them a few more models that my classmates had done (I hope I didn't violate any law or code in so doing!), and students noted the similarities and differences they saw.They realized that all of the samples contained the same SITE components, yet the style, form, and even amount of information varied from sample to sample. From there, student pairs selected from the following sites: Inspiration, Coggle, Bubbl.us, and Mindomo. They created text boxes for the following concepts in the novel in preparation for completing their collaborative posters: conflict, theme, character traits,and figurative language. In all honesty, I feel incredibly proud of myself for recognizing an opportunity to insert technology and jumping right in. I thought outside the box! I felt invigorated by doing something differently. Even one of my 1st period students, whom I have in 7th period READ 180 commented, "Mrs. De La Cruz, you were happy this morning!" And I was!
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