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The Future of Reading Home Learn More Inspiration About the Author |
About the Author
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Home has been many places: Michigan, Vermont, Kentucky, Ohio, Austria, and California. My parents and six siblings are scattered across the United States. I am daughter, sister, aunt, friend, girlfriend, roommate, and hospitality server. I am a constant reader, a brisk walker, a practical cook, a reluctant gardener, a guilty tv watcher, and an occasional thrilling adventure seeker.
But best of all, I am a teacher. |
Blogs on ImagineWhatUCanLearn.weebly.com
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Reflections on My Journey
I typed my undergraduate thesis in the university computer lab and saved it to a floppy disk. I did my research through the many alphabetized drawers of a library catalog. I listened to my Walkman with cassette tapes while I hand wrote the thirty page first draft. When I began teaching in 1995 “You’ve got mail” and “surfing the worldwide web” were new and exciting phrases. I’m not a digital native - I’m a digital convert.
Over the twenty-two years of my teaching career I’ve been fortunate enough to spend several years at every grade level from 1st grade through 8th grade. Most of these classrooms were dual or multi-grade combos. I’ve taught a few high school courses in literature, drama, or humanities. As student and teacher I’ve experienced both private and public schools and colleges. I’ve been a teacher without a credential and with one. Currently I teach K-8 at Napa Valley Independent Studies.
My greatest challenge and my greatest love as an elementary and middle school teacher has been reading instruction. I seek to spread the love of reading and the desire to do more of it. I strive to bring my students to proficiency and mastery. I believe that successful literacy is an essential foundation for all learning in any subject and career. And now I’m digging deeper into digital technologies and innovative strategies to bring this to fruition in the classroom and beyond. In my vocabulary, thinking, and practices, “literacy” is being replaced with “transliteracy”.
Over the twenty-two years of my teaching career I’ve been fortunate enough to spend several years at every grade level from 1st grade through 8th grade. Most of these classrooms were dual or multi-grade combos. I’ve taught a few high school courses in literature, drama, or humanities. As student and teacher I’ve experienced both private and public schools and colleges. I’ve been a teacher without a credential and with one. Currently I teach K-8 at Napa Valley Independent Studies.
My greatest challenge and my greatest love as an elementary and middle school teacher has been reading instruction. I seek to spread the love of reading and the desire to do more of it. I strive to bring my students to proficiency and mastery. I believe that successful literacy is an essential foundation for all learning in any subject and career. And now I’m digging deeper into digital technologies and innovative strategies to bring this to fruition in the classroom and beyond. In my vocabulary, thinking, and practices, “literacy” is being replaced with “transliteracy”.
Lasting Learning from the Innovative Learning Program
Helping Each Other With… A Box to Stand On.
The goal of the graduate program of education at Touro University is “to promote social justice by serving the community and larger society through the preparation and continuous support of professional educators to meet the needs of a constantly changing, challenging, and diverse student population.” When I first joined the Innovative Learning program, my understanding of the overall program did not take such a large, deep scope. I came with the desire to challenge my own thinking around the uses of technology and new teaching & learning strategies. I had realized that I had become too comfortable with my repertoire of pedagogical tools, classroom management routines, and teaching strategies. I was using a quickly stagnating “bag of tricks” and needed to stretch my comfort zone. I purposefully, and a bit fearfully, chose an area of study that I knew would push on my current biases. Yet as I continued through the program, I grew in a measure that I had not expected.
Over the decades I’ve been teaching, I had noticed an increasing need to address the needs of a changing population. In this regard, my goals and the T.U. program goals were already aligned. My observation has been that students are coming to us with heightened anxiety, a range of special learning needs, and from a diversity of cultures that increases through time. I have always felt that justice demands that each child receives what is due to him. Not the same treatment - but what is particularly needed to address specific needs. It is the distinction between equal education and equitable education. The Innovative Learning program has fitted me with a variety of understandings and tools to further reach the goal of equitable education.
The goal of the graduate program of education at Touro University is “to promote social justice by serving the community and larger society through the preparation and continuous support of professional educators to meet the needs of a constantly changing, challenging, and diverse student population.” When I first joined the Innovative Learning program, my understanding of the overall program did not take such a large, deep scope. I came with the desire to challenge my own thinking around the uses of technology and new teaching & learning strategies. I had realized that I had become too comfortable with my repertoire of pedagogical tools, classroom management routines, and teaching strategies. I was using a quickly stagnating “bag of tricks” and needed to stretch my comfort zone. I purposefully, and a bit fearfully, chose an area of study that I knew would push on my current biases. Yet as I continued through the program, I grew in a measure that I had not expected.
Over the decades I’ve been teaching, I had noticed an increasing need to address the needs of a changing population. In this regard, my goals and the T.U. program goals were already aligned. My observation has been that students are coming to us with heightened anxiety, a range of special learning needs, and from a diversity of cultures that increases through time. I have always felt that justice demands that each child receives what is due to him. Not the same treatment - but what is particularly needed to address specific needs. It is the distinction between equal education and equitable education. The Innovative Learning program has fitted me with a variety of understandings and tools to further reach the goal of equitable education.
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Teachers tell their students all the time that learning should be a lifelong activity. I truly believe this statement and continually strive to improve my own knowledge and skills as an educator. I am deeply grateful for the Innovative Learning Program at Touro University’s Graduate School of Education for providing the vehicle and to the NapaLearns Fellows program for gassing up the vehicle. With their teaching, assistance, and encouragement I am able to drive with confidence on the highway of 21st century teaching and learning!
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