Georgia School for the Deaf
Cave Spring, GA
In her time at her school, shes redesigned how middle school science is taught, adding more labs. The lessons that were left to her were very hands off. It was many assignments and work that was independent with little teaching or guidance from the teacher. It also heavily depended on games and technology with very little labs. Now, the kids are mostly off the computers and using their senses to make observations that they see in everyday life. They look at prefixes and suffixes, look at things we can see, touch, experience every day. The students went from a lab MAYBE once a semester to pretty much every topic she teaches. She also tries to make sure she teaches skills that are valuable not just in school, but life. Work skills, money skills, social skills. It never fails but most days she has to remind students that sometimes it is okay to take a second and breath to calm down. She is helping the school rebuild their sports program. She started coaching Pep Squad this year and is excited to expand and grow it next year. In the past couple of years, she has planned and lead the homecoming pep rallies. She gets the students involved in the pep rally. The sports teams will do a basketball shoot off (girls vs boys), this year she had the idea of a teacher vs student relay race. Each time, its been a hit! She is at a variety of events the school hosts, typically helping take pictures. She is always introducing me to her students who immediately ask me a million questions.
She has been leading the science department. She sets up meetings to ensure that they all use the same signs, see what equipment they need and see what the other science teachers need. She also ensures that my door is always open to them to talk content at any point. She has also been helping another teacher review and build her own science lessons this year. Each Friday they sit down, and plan lessons together. When questions arise, they talk it out. Many times, it helps their lessons improve. She has been giving her lab ideas and American sign language signs that she uses in her classroom to help make it consistent across the school. If they can’t figure it out together, they go find someone who can help them. For the middle school team, she has stepped up and taken over a lot of the organization type stuff they tend to share. She makes schedules for weird weeks like state testing, plan awards day, she also plan field trips, any middle school team meeting she take notes and ensure all members get a copy. A big thing that she do for her team and other teachers is offered to help. About 2-3 times a semester she will check on the other teachers and ask if there is anything she can do. Sometimes it is as simple as cutting out laminations or reading out scores to them, other times its helping them collect data.
Her first year teaching she went from High School Social Studies to Middle School Science in the middle of the school year. She completely redesigned how it was taught. She made it more hands on, more labs, more related to their everyday lives. Many times, the students would struggle to understand more abstract topics because they are visual students. So, she spent hours looking for labs so that they could experience the concept visually. One example is as a Hearing teacher she has to teach deaf kids sound waves. It seems almost impossible from most people’s point of view and from listening to her talk it out, it probably is. However, one day she was listening to music, and she noticed that it didn’t have to be so hard. With a small musical background, she remembered that Violins and Cellos are different sounds but also different vibrations. It was watching Wednesday the Netflix show that reminded her of that. She took that and ran off with the idea. It is now a set of lessons she labels “Sound week”. She turn up her volume so that each kid can feel the difference in the vibrations. She look at the frequency, pitch and hertz of the way. She then lead that into showing them audiograms, results from audiological (hearing) tests, and show them theirs and explain why sounds are different and what they can or can’t hear varies.