Inventive Instructor

I have been a full-time teacher since 2008. I have taught both primary and secondary students leading to a deeper understanding of how mastery of standards at one level can impact mastery of standards at another. I have also been a mentor teacher and coach in various teacher training programs. I am confident that the materials I am sharing will work with students across grade levels, content areas, and levels of teacher experience.

People learn by doing, not listening. Every resource I share will be one where students have to do the heavy lifting, and teachers can guide them through the necessary process. My teaching philosophy is: - Student-centered: Learning that capitalizes on students’ questions, interests, background knowledge - Authentic: Rich, complex ideas and materials are at the heart of the curriculum. - Holistic: Students learn best when they encounter whole, big ideas, events, and materials in authentic and purposeful contexts that have meaning and relevance to their own lives. - Experimental: Active, hands-on learning experiences that are concrete and powerful, immersing students in direct experiences throughout all subject areas. - Challenging: Students learn best when they are challenged, have choice, and take responsibility for their own learning. They learn best when learning is scaffold in complexity and rise to these challenges. - Cognitive: Learning is most powerful when concepts are realized through higher-order thinking, or “cognition” associated with fields of inquiry, involve self-monitoring of their own thinking, and involve explicit teaching and modeling of not just the skill, but the thinking behind the skill. - Developmental: Students undergo a series of developmental stages in their learning. - Constructivist: Students re-create and reinvent their own learning when it is encountered in a constructivist sense, to include language, literacy, and mathematics. - Expressive: Meaning construction must be fully engaged for students to employ an entire gamut of meaning construction and expression through reading, writing, listening, and speaking. - Reflective: Learning is reflection, and students must have regular opportunities to reflect on, and debrief about, their learning. - Interactive: Learning is most powerful when students can discuss, debate, and converse about their learning. - Sociable: There are social aspects to learning that involve a safe and clean learning environment, comfort, community, and mutual support from peers. - Collaborative: Small group learning and activities draw upon social power. - Democratic: A model classroom community is one in which all students live and interact as members of a democratic community, whereby they are not consumers of information, but nurturers and supporters as well.

Technology Certifications - Google Certified (Level 1) - Flipgrid Certified - Edpuzzle Certified (Level 1, Level 2, Coach, Flipped) - NewsELA Certified

BA in Political Science and Leadership Studies - Williams College MA in Teaching English as a Second Language - Lehman College (CUNY) MA in Curriculum Design and Instructional Technology - State University at Albany

Feel free to contact me if you have any additional questions. INVENTIVEINSTRUCTOR@GMAIL.COM