Me and all my friends presenting at LISD today. #asmartucate

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Kellie and I having fun at EdTech Kickoff! #asmartucate by asmart17

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Mrs.Smart and Mrs.DeLosSantos having fun at Ed Tech Kickoff! #gomaples #asmartucate #teamjxn by apsmaplepride

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4 Tried & True Reading Strategies Revamped

This summer I started my first class for my Ed Tech degree through UofM Flint. Of course, like usual, I am not doing this in order and I am actually taking one of the last classes of the program first, Course Design. I spent the first two weeks of the course debating the course I would design. I began designing the curriculum for our 5th grade computer course, which I do not teach. In week three, I decided I would redesign the course I teach at Adrian College. The course is College Critical Reading and Thinking, it is through the Academic Service department, and is for freshman who scored low on the Reading ACT or came to AC with a low GPA. Most of the students play sports and have very demanding/busy schedules, they are beyond raising their reading levels, and have never really been "readers",  so I like to focus the class on teaching them strategies that will help them efficiently read and organize text. 

When I sat down to redesign the class I wanted to narrow down the strategies I teach and focus on three to four that cover efficiency and organization. These three strategies are what I like to call Tried & True strategies. They are strategies that have been around for a very long time and are still seen today in reading strategy books. What I tried to do was make these strategies computer reading friendly. As you look at each lesson plan of the four you will see/hear apps and web tools that will help students use these same strategies when reading online. Be sure to watch the video links! 

Online Active Reading 

SQ3R

4C

Triple HIghlighting

Enjoy! 

Daily 5 Revamped

I had the pleasure of working with elementary teachers from all over the county at the LISD's Daily 5 Revamped. I was asked to share apps and websites that engage, support independence and stamina. I was lucky enough to "present" in the new CMat center. I loved the comfy, collaborative space to talk and discuss with others.  

I titled my session 5 for 5,  the purpose of the session was to focus on 5 engaging apps to use during Daily 5: Explain Everything/Educreations, Aurasma, Nearpod, Write About This, and Zooburst.

Aurasma was fun to show the teachers. I used the book Grace for President and with the help of my 7 year old daughter we made the book interactive using Aurasma and Explain Everything (check out the video, sorry not the best quality). We made AR flashcards using vocab terms from the book also. 

Video your students reading a piece of writing and make the piece a AR trigger for parent teacher night. 

I become more and more impressed with Nearpod. Publishers like Time for Kids and ReadWorks.org have started producing Nearpod lessons to go along with the magazines and articles. I shared with the teachers that Nearpod is a great way to formatively assess students during and after a lesson.  

In two weeks I will be back to the CMat to present at CRAFTing on A-Z Science, Evernote, and Google collaboration.

I can't wait for our classrooms to start looking more like this! 

  

I'm Back

Whenever I am feeling a bit overwhelmed
this picture comes to mind.  

Summer is coming to an end and school work is starting to pick back up. Even though I have had a little down time over the past month and a half, I have been working on preparing for a few PD events and designing a course for a class I am taking for my Ed Tech endorsement. I love when people ask me if I enjoy having my summers off, I like to reply with "I am on a different shift". It is not easy being a stay at home mom and full time teacher in the summers.

Over the next few weeks I have the privilege of presenting at the Lenawee County Intermediate School District. First is July 30th 5 for 5, The session will focus on 5 engaging apps to use during Daily 5. On August 4th I will be assisting at the LISD's writing camp. August 13th I am back for CRAFTing showing teachers how to use Blogs, Google collaboration tools, and Science A-Z. I am super excited to have been invited to present at Jackson ISD's Digital Leadership for Learning on August 14th. Kellie and I will be presenting on Which comes first? Instruction or Technology?

So, yes I am enjoying my summer. I enjoy working with teachers who are passionate to learn (during their summer) and make their classroom more engaging for their students. 
Back to work. Lots to do! 

Year 10 In The Books

Year #10 is in the books! I really believe everything happens for a reason. Ten years ago my husband and I took a leap of faith and moved to Breckenridge, Colorado. I was able to pick up a one year teaching position in a elementary school while also coaching C-Team Volleyball. A year later we were moving to Bellingham, Washington where I was lucky to get hired as a volleyball coach at a small school literally at the end of the road, Mount Baker High School in Deming, WA. GO Mountaineers! About one week into my coaching job they hired me as a High School Reading Specialist/Literacy Coach, did I mention I had a major in PE and a minor in elementary? The school was in trouble, it needed to raise reading scores. The principals thought I would be a great fit in the role because I could connect to the students. Did I mention I was a PE teacher? I did not know much about secondary reading, let alone coaching other teacher on how to teach reading. I was lucky in that they allowed me to spend the first semester figuring out what the heck I was going to do because this was a brand new position in the district. They also asked me to coach two more sports that year, basketball and golf (never really played golf before either). To make a 5 year story short, in those five years I learned how to become a reading teacher, I was trained in a direct instructional model, I do, we do, you do. I liked to call it the “do do model”. I learned how to grow a thick skin while working with reluctant staff members who did not believe I was qualified to do my job (I can’t blame them, it was a lot of trial and error). I was part of a school that went from the bottom of the list according to state scores to the top! I watched teachers work together to make this happen, whether they agreed or not, they did what was best for students. Little did I know...

I am excited for the last day, Grace not so much. 

In May of 2010 I was on maternity leave with my second child, I had also just come off knee surgery (that is a whole other story). So the drugs were good, and when the opportunity arrived for us to move back to Michigan we went for it. I was hired as a middle school Reading teacher. Funny enough, I was hired back at the middle school where my mother taught for 20+ years and where I attended 6th-8th grade. I remember the superintendent at the time saying “so you came back to die?”, um yep, pretty much.  I was scared to death to teach middle school. However, once I got use to all the pimples and hormones I really liked their kind. Ironically, the school district was in trouble, reading scores were bad, the high school was giving a federal School Improvement Grant (SIG), $3,000,000, and told to make changes or else. SO, in my second year I was approached by the superintendent and asked to become a high school Literacy Coach (at the high school I graduated from almost 15 years prior). Ironically, I was trained again in Direct Interactive Instruction, given a group of teachers to work with and told to help raise scores. One year later I was made into a full time 5th-12th grade ELA and Social Studies Instructional Coach. I am in charge of 30+ teachers, instruction, PD/PLC, curriculum, data, scores, and so on. It’s not easy, but I love it. This is why I know everything happens for a reason. Over the past four years I have fallen back on what I learned those first six years of my career to help improve my alma mater. I have grown so much as a person and professional. I work with a great team of people who all want nothing but the best for our schools.  

Of course with teaching there is the ugly side. I am in my 10th year of teaching and still being paid as a first year teacher (due to a frozen contract after receiving one year of service when I accepted the position). I struggle with the reality that others in the same position as me make MUCH more money that I do. I struggle with the fact that I love where I work, but will we ever be able to really make the changes we need to make to take us to the next level. I struggle with reality that I am going back to school this summer to get ANOTHER certification because as professional  we need a certification after certification to “prove” ourselves.

I tend to feel down at the end of each year. I wonder did I do my best this year? What could I have done better? Did I miss an opportunity? I feel bad for all the teachers that get laid off because of funding or bad staffing decisions. I get angry at the ones who get greedy.  I wonder what will next year hold? This year during that time I was scrolling through Facebook and saw this video somebody had posted. It is Jim Carrey giving a commencement speech. One of his final lines is “do what you love”. Those four words reeled me back in. If I was not a teacher that what would I be? I can’t answer that.

I love what I do. Yes, the pay sucks, yes it’s not easy, but I could not imagine it any other way. I have learned so much in these past ten years not only about the profession but about myself as a person and learner. I hope the next ten years are just as crazy as the last because, “Experience only teaches the teachable” -Aldous Huxley