ABOUT MY CLASSROOM
On this page you will get to virtually step into my classroom. You can explore my basic teaching philosophy along with examples of units and activities taught to students in my courses. Enjoy!
OHS classroom (notice desks facing only forward--pandemic teaching!)
I have been teaching English Language Arts (ELA) to high school students for the past seven years, and never have I been as challenged to deliver effective content instructions as I have been by 2020. However, I believe that the challenges that a pandemic poses in relation to teaching young students has given me an opportunity to reflect on and recommit to my teaching philosophy.
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I currently work at Oxford High School, in Oxford, MI, teaching 10th and 11th grade ELA. This is my first year at Oxford (changing jobs in a pandemic? How nuts am I?!). I previously taught at Notre Dame Preparatory School in Pontiac, MI for six years, teaching 9th grade Language & Literature and AP Language & Composition. This change gave me the abilities to reflect on what I want to accomplish as an educator, and why I want to accomplish it. What I realized is that though my surroundings may change, my objective remains the same: to provide students with a safe, welcoming environment in which they can grow & thrive as their authentic selves.
I teach literature because I believe it opens doors to students--it allows students to live lives and enjoy experiences they may not otherwise have in their own worlds. When a student opens a book, they can live in ancient Egypt, WWII France, or Modern-day China. They can see the world through the eyes of paupers and princes. They can even immerse themselves in stories that ponder what the future may be like, or how our world would be different should we discover some new scientific breakthrough. Literature sparks a curiosity essential to learning, and I hope to ignite that spark in my students.
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It is part of my philosophy that I create a welcoming, warm, and safe space for students to express themselves. To me, learning is not about getting a grade or being accepted into the best college, but rather it is about exploring the unknown and using that knowledge to find one's place in the world. Building a community of trust and understanding is paramount in my classroom; when that type of foundation is lain, students can feel free to dig into that exploration that makes learning so enjoyable.
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Throughout the rest of this page you will encounter units, lessons, activities, and photos that hopefully provide you with a glimpse into my classroom. You can also view a more in depth explanation of a few of my favorite books I teach on my "Book Recommendations" page. Enjoy!
THE IB MINDSET
Both Notre Dame Preparatory and Oxford High School offer the International Baccalaureate (IB) Programme to students. As a 9th and 10th grade teacher, I have been able to use the Middle Years Programme as a framework for my teaching.
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Teaching the MYP allows me to develop units in a way that provides students with opportunities to explore their own strengths. Though IB has a particular framework for its language & literature courses, the rubrics allow for me to mold them to what I am working on with students in the classroom. The framework is not rigid, and so student learning is not rigid.
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In the image to the right, you can see the IB learner profile. These traits make their way into everything we focus on when teaching through the lens of IB and MYP, and using these pushes students to explore themselves and be receptive towards their peers. What I like about this is that it guides students in their development beyond academics, which I believe to be one of the most important aspects in educating a child.
If you click on the link above or the image, you will be taken to the IB homepage where you can see more specifically what that profile is.
Goal words from the 2020-2021 school year at OHS
Each year, I begin by asking my students to participate in a "one word" activity. The objective of this is to ask students to reflect on and come up with goals they have for the new school year. What do you want to achieve this year? What will help you get there? Once they have created a few goals, I ask them to think about how they can sum that goal up in one word.
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After students come up with this "one word" to summarize their goal, I ask them to share it. I make a list on the board, and then, as a class, we vote on what we believe should be the class's word that will unify us. I explain that this word will carry us through this year: when you feel frustrated, think of this word; when you feel stressed, think of this word; when you feel you want to quit school, think of this word, because we are all in this together. Without even realizing it, students begin to talk about the IB learner profile traits as they explain their reasons behind why they think that word should be our word. The conversations and insights this activity yields is truly astounding and reminds me why I'm continually impressed by the young people with whom I work.
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I enjoy starting the year with this activity because it helps me get to know students a bit. But this also helps students understand that they have agency over their learning--this is their experience, not mine. Engaging in the work of picking just one or two words as a class to unify us also shows students that they are part of a community, and that together, we will grow.
A FACELIFT FOR A CLASSIC
One of my more ambitious undertakings in the recent past was to re-write a unit for a beloved novel: To Kill a Mockingbird. I have taught this book each year I have been teaching, including my student-teaching year. It is near and dear to my heart, but it was time I let it go as the sole text of a unit that discusses racial injustice--it just wasn't doing a good enough job. After much deliberation and reflection, I--along with the other 9th grade MYP Language & Literature teacher--decided we needed to make this unit more diverse if we were going to call it a "social justice" unit. Lee's message on racism, while important, was just too outdated and irrelevant to today's students.
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The idea began when The Hate U Give film came out; we thought the novel by the same name made racism and injustice more accessible and relevant, and played with the idea that we would trade Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird for Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give.
Images obtained from Amazon.com
That vision quickly changed into creating a unit that explores many types of injustice and diversity beyond race. The year we changed this unit was also the year we decided to de-track the 9th grade English course, and choosing to include a book-of-choice unit allowed us to differentiate our instruction to better meet the variety of needs of all of our students. So, To Kill a Mockingbird became our anchor text to model reading for the theme of the coming-of-age and social justice, characterization, and close reading techniques. After we read select chapters, students participated in a "book tasting" to pick their independent reading novel, which would become the novel used for their book clubs. To help students choose, we created a Wix site that gave students a synopsis of each book on the choice list.
Clicking on the image will take you to the book choice site
Though I was only able to teach this unit at Notre Dame Preparatory once, it helped me see how I could create units like this in my new position as well in order to make learning material relevant, increase the literary diversity in the classroom, and offer students choice in what they use to practice important ELA skills. As a summative assessment, we even had students design their own final project (with a bit of guidance, of course). Students were able to pick from a list of options (or, if they wanted, could propose an idea that was entirely their own) and then were to create an MYP (Middle Years Programme) rubric that reflected what a strong demonstration of knowledge in relation to our unit learning objectives would look like. Below are the project instructions and rubric and a student sample of a final project for this unit; the student chose to create a digital cartoon tracking character development and social justice as it relates to mental health in It's Kind of a Funny Story. Below, you will also find a reflection on how the unit went that I wrote for the Diversity Committee Newsletter in December of 2019. The intention of this letter was to demonstrate to colleagues how we can make our curriculum more diverse, both in terms of inclusive content and diverse instructional techniques to meet a wide range of students.
This document details the project options that serve as the unit's summative assessment; students are able to create their own rubric to demonstrate their knowledge.
Project Options & Rubric
This document details the project options that serve as the unit's summative assessment; students are able to create their own rubric to demonstrate their knowledge.
Final Project
Student Sample
Diversity Newsletter reflection on the success of the new To Kill a Mockingbird and Independent Novel Unit
Diversity Newsletter
Novel images obtained from Amazon; IB learner profile obtained from blogs.ibo.org; student work used with permission.