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Chelle Grunewald get's students up and moving each day to start the hour with an opener at white boards. Chelle uses such strong words to EMPOWER students to take ownership of their own learning and prepare themselves for independence and confidence.

Way to go Chelle!

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I use visibly random groups daily. Students do whiteboard work to digest and apply their learning. This way students get to meet new peers throughout the quarter. I have found students learn better when they are "standing" for some portion of the class period.

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Mariela Ramírez is a rockstar when it comes creating an empowering language learning environment that is incredibly engaging and exciting. This is due, in part, to the predictability of the class that some tried and true classroom routines and rituals provide. When students come in to class knowing to expect that they will start with the "weekly song", and then transition into the "presentation" phase of a new topic, knowing that it will be followed by the class working together co-construction of rules, they feel safe, supported, and confident. Mariela has inspired me to use a lot more second language input in my classroom, and has shown me some great ways to "cue" students with extra-linguistic stimuli so that they can grasp more of what is being said or read without fear that they don't understand every word. She's helped me "immersion-ify" my regular track spanish classes! SO FUN!

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Powerful Examples for Student Understanding!

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Powerful Examples for Student Understanding!

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Scott Sayles has a talent for crafting a story and selecting memorable examples that bring the content to life for the students. Recently, I witnessed him presenting a session for our DECA students to support their preparation for an upcoming competition. His method of presenting the strategies to the students was engaging and learning was evident as students immediately applied what they learned with partners.

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Full class engagement in fun spelling/grammar practice games.

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Grace Lybeck did such a great job of giving students the agenda for the day - something that I had gotten away from when I transitioned from middle school to high school. I think it gave students a good picture of what to expect - and can even help them know when natural breaks will happen or when a bathroom break makes the most sense.

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Relaxed and Comfortable class environment

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Relaxed and Comfortable class environment

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Katie M does a great job of fostering a comfortable class environment through fun activities (music mondays with guess the song!) and building relationships with students, and this was so cool to see as students were comfortable asking questions about topics involving academic support and college preparation.

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I visited Allison Grajkowske during one of her more difficult classes and she had all of the students focused and working. In this self-paced class, Allison makes sure that all students know what they need to be working on each day and provides the one-on-one support they each needed to get through successfully.

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Statt did a great job with prioritizing relationships amongst the students. This allowed to better connect and reach them with high expectations and accountability.

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I observed Dack Flagel and the way he found ways to connect with all of the students in the class was impressive. In an EL class he found ways to make everyone feel important in the class. One way I noticed was by learning a few basic words in their first language. It was evident his classroom felt like a home to his students and they felt they could be themselves.

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Observing Quynh's economics classes helped me learn how to balance collaboration and holding students to high standards individually in the classroom. I was also able to learn more ways to make dense material more engaging for students who may struggle with tough concepts.

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Mark Anderson has a dynamic way of teaching. He is very clear with his examples and then asks the students to practice what he is modeling. It's a great balance of teacher instruction and student collaboration. The students are engaged!

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I think something I do well is use the block class length to utilize different strategies - whole class games, small group work, individual work time, whole group instruction, etc. Their attention spans need the change-up and it provides lots of opportunity for them to learn from their peers.

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Andrea Benzine covers important (and sometimes tough) topics in health in a way that engages every single student and prompts them to reflect on real-world scenarios, including discussing how they can engage with healthy relationships. She fosters an environment where students are excited to collaborate with each other and feel comfortable discussing these topics.

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I cheated and went outside of our learning cohort to observe a couple classrooms. One of the classrooms was a demonstration of joining a tabletop in Woodworking. Sheila S. did a veteran/masterful job of walking students through a recent lesson on measurements for using a router bit on a table top, before taking students through the process of using a table saw with varying blade widths. Students were engaged in their drafting notebooks before joining her for a saw demonstration, then finally walking through their own process of creating their table top.

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Mark Anderson has students intrigued from the moment they walk in the room, even explaining how they should walk into a room for an interview. His demonstrations of what to do and what not to do were animated and captivating. The students could not wait to try it out themselves.

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Mark was so energetic and professional at the same time. While instructing students how to approach the interview process, he role modeled, shared real life experiences, and added some humor. Student's were provided the opportunity to move and practice the skills after each discussion/instruction. He did a great job of breaking up the hour into smaller segments to keep the students interested, engaged, and active. I would highly encourage others to observe such a master teacher.

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As an AVID teacher, I believe I do a good job of holding students to high expectations not just for creating a positive environment within the classroom environment with their peers but also holding high expectations for success in their courses, extracurriculars and being involved in the EP community. I motivate students through tutorial groups to challenge themselves in what academic skills they could grow in and where their peers could help them.

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Dack Flagel does an incredible job of personalizing connection and communication with each of his students across diverse cultural and language backgrounds. His teaching involves constant on-the-fly accommodations and scaffolding for students, and he is tuned in to student needs during the entire class period. The classroom environment is comfortable and collaborative, with students jumping in with comments or to provide a vocab word in their 1st language.

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Chad Tower was my co-teacher in a rather... exciting English 10 class first term. Chad was able to connect with all students by providing structure and support. He did a great job implementing differentiated practice for specific students in order to create success. He was very deliberate in developing a dynamic in the classroom that offered high level encouragement and rigor. This helped me learn different classroom management skills that helped with my other classes. Couldn't have done it without him!

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This is an area I have been working on in both of the capstone courses I teach. Through a hybrid/blended model, students are expected to contribute to their team analysis by a set deadline. This deadline is reinforced by removing the hybrid privileges if the deadline is missed. Launching this model in addition to summatively grading collaboration when they are working in their businesses has increased individual accountability and team culture. I look forward to continuing to collect data around these practices.

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I had the pleasure to observe Andrew's Spanish 1 class during the fall. Something that I would love to highlight it's how dynamic he is on this teaching practice. Also, he played a game with the students where they need to do a big circle and grab some labels to identify Spanish words and I've never seen students so engaged to an activity. One of Andrew's strength is making student's learning so fun and having such a positive experience and is something that I want to implement in my classes. He also takes in consideration student-voice and their interest and I think that's wonderful. Including parts of "Historia de Amor" where they use language in an educational context while also enjoying the activity. He as also I'm so glad he is in our World Language Department and he is totally impacting our students in increasing rigor.

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I also cheated and went outside the cohort and watched a teacher (Megan Southwick) teach something SO BEYOND my scope. She was teaching content around accounting. Which, in my experience, is rather uninteresting (sorry business people).

Meg was able to create a curriculum that touched on certain ELPs in a fun way! She had the kids using real life accounting skills to practice the content they were learning, but with dramatic real life scenarios. I actually was able to LEARN things about about accounting! If I could learn and engage from that, anyone can. :)