STRENGTHENING EDUCATOR COMMUNITIES
AT YOKOHAMA INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING IN SPITE OF THE PANDEMIC
In collaboration with my teammates worked to provide on and off-campus experiential learning opportunities to motivate student-driven inquiry-based learning. Students met with representatives of indigenous communities virtually and in-person to explore the modern impacts of colonialism on members of their community, and in the world at large, explored the neighborhoods around our campus looking for evidence of their identity, and collaborated with peers and community members to solve issues of sustainability and scarcity that are shaping our globe today.
INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION
Learning is relevant, interconnected, and grounded in students' interests and wondering. Interdisciplinary collaboration allows educators to ensure that school stays relevant to students' real-world passions, as well as ensuring that learning is meaningful and broadly explored. Collaboration across core subject areas as well as drama, music, art, and design makes it clear to students that our classrooms, and the subjects we teach, are not disconnected silos of information but rather interconnected approaches to knowing and understanding the world around us.
VERTICAL ALIGNMENT
As the member of my team teaching the broadest breadth of students in terms of grade levels, I am uniquely positioned to be a part of re-designs of numerous middle and high school units to better align them to both past and future learning. We have eliminated several redundancies in which students were taught the same skill multiple times in the same manner over the years. When our planning is intentional, instruction improves and students' approaches to learning can be more carefully scaffolded for.
AT CAROL MORGAN SCHOOL
PRESENTING AT REGIONAL CONFERENCES
Involvement at conferences allows me to create a dialogue with educators from around the region and the world, to improve my own practice, bring new ideas to our school, and share best practices.
I have had the privilege of participating in two TRI Association conferences, as an attendee in Santo Domingo in 2018, and as a presenter in 2019 in Monterrey.
VERTICAL ALIGNMENT - CONTENT AND SKILLS
I have been involved in a multi-year effort to select, amend, and implement content and skill standards for use in social studies classrooms in the middle and high school divisions. As the longest-serving foreign hire teacher in my division, I have been involved in many of these meetings led by various administrators, which has given me the capacity to view the standards from multiple perspectives and deeply understand their relevance for the work that we do in the classroom.
INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE BASED LEARNING COACH
After successfully launching the high school divisions first "open" international experience-based learning opportunity - field research in collaboration with professors from Harvard and Arcadia University to Palestine, Jordan, and Tel Aviv, I was asked to work to build structures to allow more teachers to succeed in this realm, without having to build connections and understanding of school financial and policy structures from scratch.
Several new learning opportunities in the region are developing as a result my efforts, with greater transparency around academic standards alignment than in the past.
AT NEW VISIONS CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL FOR ADVANCED MATH AND SCIENCE (NVCHS AMS)
CURRICULUM DESIGN AND TRAINING
As a teacher and leader at a newly established school, I had the opportunity to select resources and build curricula to support student learning. As we expanded, my role as department head allowed me to coach first-year teachers as well as those who were coming from a more traditional model.
Much of what I developed was adopted "network-wide," and was being used across nine schools by the time I left. This experience taught me how to work with others, revisit and revise approaches to student success, and build lasting structures meeting the needs of multiple stakeholders.
UFT ACTS REPRESENTATIVE AND NATIONAL SPEAKER
Although charter schools in the United States are not known to be friendly to unionization, during my tenure as chapter leader, school administrators and myself were able to collaboratively meet the needs of the Board, administrators, educators, and, ultimately, our students.
The result of these efforts led to the highest student achievement data and teacher retention in our network. This was recognized at AFT national conferences in Washington DC and New Orleans.
TABLE LEADER FOR NY REGENTS (STATE EXAM) SCORING
The New York Regents Exams are rigorous, common core aligned assessments that are required for graduation in New York State.
I was asked to serve as a scoring table leader for the NYS Regents Exams in both Global and US History for multiple years, ensuring that graders were applying the standards as envisioned by the state consistently and correctly. This work, vital for such a high-stakes exam that impacts graduation, deepened my ability to comprehend and implement common core standards across a variety of assignments.
PROJECT BASED LEARNING - THE GATES AND APPLE MODELS
Our school worked closely with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Apple's Challenge Based Learning Collaborative to implement and develop project-based learning and cross-curricular project-based assessments.
This process was collaborative and involved major innovators in education nationwide, which allowed me to lead a social studies department that worked hard to implement best practices and experiment with new ideas in a way that protected the best interests of our students and community.
INDEPENDENT
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING AT HARVARD
I am in the process of completing Harvard Graduate School for Education's Instructional Leadership Certificate, which provides a theoretical framework to shape the work I currently do and have done in the past leading PLCs.
Completed a Graduate Certificate in International Relations from Harvard Extension School. Coursework focused on international human rights law, the role of the Caribbean in global power systems, a social history of US occupation regimes from the 19th century to today, and the role of race and ethnicity in modern politics.
NATIONAL BOARD CERTIFICATION
In addition to my Professional Certification from New York State, I am accredited by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. This is by far the most rigorous professional certification the US credentialed educator can achieve, as it requires continuous documentation, reflection, and action research on the success of our students. According to NBPTS, Board Certified Teachers out-perform their colleagues in terms of student learning, collaboration, and data analysis.
COLLABORATION WITH THE COLLEGE BOARD
I have been involved in launching new AP programs at all of my places of work, and am currently an AP Reader for AP US History (which uses the same rubrics and scoring guidelines as AP World History). Additionally, I am a founding teacher of our AP Capstone program, the newest element of the AP Curriculum. I teach AP Seminar, which in many ways mirrors the IB Theory of Knowledge course - focusing on students' presentation, collaboration, and research skills to enhance college readiness.