Expanding Their Horizons: My Wilson Girls

Mickey Sullivan

It is difficult to select just one best day of teaching.  Most of the time, these experiences happen in the classroom, but sometimes the most rewarding ones fall outside of the school day, for example, running into a former student . . . However, a very memorable experience for me was taking three of my Wilson girls to a girls science event at USD one weekend several years back.  It was St. Patrick's day, knowing they may have nothing green to wear, I gave theme each a sparkly broach.  I also wanted to start the day off right, and took them all to breakfast at Coco's, which they had never even heard of before . . . during the event, we were separated, and I did not get to observe the marvelous experiences they were involved in.  At the end of the day, on the drive home they shared stories of conducting forensics experiments, and meeting other girls in science from all over!  The next week they generated hand written thank you notes to me . . . and I have since seen a few of these girls, and they are very fond of these memories.  I love that I was able to get them involved in something so memorable and relevant.  I only wish I could have taken more girls to this awesome event!  Here is a link to the Expand Your Horizons page, very much worth the effort.  Get your girls there! And, more importantly, expose your students to science!  https://www.sandiego.edu/news/cas/detail.php?_focus=54605

Brandon Maze: A painfully great Townhall Meeting

It is hard to choose, so I will stick to my best day so far this year. I teach 11th grade History at San Marcos High School (both AP and CP). We were focusing on the build up to the Revolutionary War in my AP class and I had the students choose an historical figure from the time. Some of the choices were from the Colonies, a couple from Britain, and one or two from France, some of them were Patriots, others Loyalists. On Friday, after having done their research and made some inferences, they role played a town hall meeting discussing whether the colonies could/should declare independence and why. The discussion was absolutely great. It was my favorite day, though, because the students were also absolutely hilarious; my face literally hurt as the bell rang.

Tina Roy Best Day Ever

I am a sixth grade math teacher who has been trying to teach my students how to be real world problem solvers.  What I have been doing is having them look at an exemplar problem.  I had students examine their work against the exemplar.  They first made a list in their notebook of how their work was different from the exemplar.  Then they did a pair share, then a group discussion and finally a large group discussion.  Students created a list of strategies for solving problems.  I tried to embed the work in how they approach writing to make that connection.  This group discussion is the beginning of a year long growth process.  

Celebration of Learning

 

One of my favorite teaching days was the culmination of a project-based learning unit. Students had studied an element of local history and their goal was to simply share their learning with the community.  Students had the opportunity to view student-created exhibits, websites, performances.  Students also participated in a student  film festival.  Members of the community were invited to give students feedback on their work.  It was an awesome celebration of their learning.

Alex Schwartz

One of my favorite teaching moments is from 2011 in Namibia, Africa.  I taught English to secondary learners who were used to traditional rote methods (vocabulary regurgitation, copying down sentence’s, etc.)  of learning the language.  Instead of using these methods, I redesigned a unit that centered their learning around designing a new national park for the wildlife in their area.  They were required to use english vocabulary and other ESL staples in an advertisement to attract tourists, the signposts throughout the park, etc.  

Throughout the project they were overjoyed at the idea that they were able to work in groups, draw their parks, and contemplate creative and attractive English sentences.  As I watched them, I realized how important it was to make learning authentic to students.  This deeply shaped my pedagogy and educational experience.

Mi mejor Dia

Michelle Traub

¿Mi mejor dia?

My best teaching day ever? I have been teaching for six years and I still don’t think I could I pick a favorite day. My favorite teaching day is a cumulation of all of the little moments. The moment when a child who has had a tough time raises his hand and answers a question correctly, smiling proudly ear to ear when he gets it right. The moment when a student hears Spanish out in the “real world” and comes bouncing into class barely able to contain herself with excitement of waiting all weekend to tell me. The moments when students say “Gracias” when they leave my classroom and really mean it. The times when I can really see the light bulb turn on or when I see a student do something really nice for someone else without looking for recognition. The many memories of students humming Spanish songs in the hallway and parents telling me that they learned a new Spanish song at the dinner table from their student. The reassuring hugs from a co-teacher after a difficult day or the understanding from students when I share that something outside of school is affecting my teaching and I may be a little off that day. There are so many moments, from so many days that make up my favorite day. I don’t think it is possible for me to pick any single one.

Jennifer Gembala

One of my favorite teaching moments was last year (and this year), when I was teaching a writing technique for my AP World History classes. I teach APWH to 9th and 10th graders, but when I teach the DBQ, I teach the technique to all of my World History classes, no matter the level. When I teach it, I emphasize the technique of “grouping docs” by using actual candy as my documents. So I pour a bunch of candy (chocolate, hard candy, chewy candy, sour, etc) in front of each group of students, and then tell them to organize the candy, title the groups of candy they’ve created, and identify why the candy group is called that. They then have to write a thesis paragraph, that responds to the question “Analyze the impact the diversity of candy offered during the 2016 Halloween season has on American health.” They love grouping, talking with each other, and eating the candy, and it just really makes me love my job on days like that :)