Early Childhood Specialist

2020 National Teacher Of The Year

AEPS: An assessment that involves family.

Set routines and set your environment so that your students can be independent.

Easy To Love, Difficult To Discipline-BOOK RESORUCE

How To Build An Equitable Classroom-BOOK RESOURCE

Educator for 10 years

Assessment is a procedure for making a difference.

The Science of Assessments

Keep opportunities to respond high while teaching.

Design your assessments strategically.

IS practice guides-RESOURCE

Dylan William-RESOURCE

Has worked in ALL subject areas 7th-12th grade

Her assessment definition is that you stop and assess whether you have completed the goal you are trying to achieve.

Likes using and creating her own rubrics to see the standard they are trying to reach and the content mastery.

Rubrics help you work smarter not harder.

Use exit slips and forms for quick updates on your students learning.

Students will perform better when you have a good relationship with them.

To have structure you can teach expectations at the beginning of the year.

Learning By Doing-RESOURCE

To see student learning we need to have interactive lesson plans and engaging activities.

Think Again-RESOURCE

"If you are a good leader you are a good person".

Be a lifetime learner.

14 years in Olathe.

Personal Definition: A tool to use to guide the teacher on what they know and what to learn next.

Fast and Easy Assessment

Hands on things for assessment

Using tool kits and having the kids keep them in their desks.

First month of kindergarten practicing rules and routines.

Work Smarter Not Harder: Set boundaries to have a good work/life balance. Get to work early and plan ahead for the next week. If everyone takes a part of the load on the your teacher team.

Be extra nice to the secretary and janitor. Listen to your team and your coworkers.

Try new things!

Don't take yourself too seriously.

Leave your home problems at the door.

The power of words is important.

Out of My Mind-RESOURCE

Representation of your students in your books is so important.

Has had a lot of experience in different grades.

Personal Definition: Can students apply the knowledge?

Leave assessments open for students to show you their knowledge in their own way.

Start with the standards then break them down to essential questions or thoughts.

Test were always open-ended.

Students could always learn at their own speed.

Work Smarter Not Harder: Take little pieces of content and do what you can with it and slowly add more. Small changes matter too.

You must show the parents you know and care about their kids. Build relationships with your students.

Small Bets-RESOURCE

Deeper Learning-RESOURCE

2. What are the strategies that you hear most often? The assessment strategies I heard the most were to keep the assessments open so that you can change them for the needs of the student. I also heard they have multiple different assessments they switch out.

3. Which Mentor did you connect with? Explain why! I connected with TJ Ulmer because his explanation of him letting the students choose when they are ready to be assessed. I liked his idea of not having the students sit through the same information all week if they have the information down on Tuesday.

4. What surprised you about any of the Mentors? I was most surprised by how many of them use books and podcasts as resources. I was more surprised about podcasts because I haven't heard of any educator based podcasts before watching the guest mentors.

5. What are one or two questions you would like to pose to a Mentor Educator? I would ask them how they deal with students who don't like assessments and don't want to be assessed. I assume this will come up sometime in my teaching career so it would be nice to hear if they have any Do's and Don'ts.