mrs. Alison VanOverbeke
On Teaching and Learning
"...education rightly conceived has had two great goals: to help students become smart and to help them become good.”
The Art of Teaching
As cliché as it sounds, a teacher really does wear many hats: subject-area expert, cheerleader, scheduler, manager, disciplinarian, psychologist, social worker, and more; teaching is without a doubt a balancing act and an art form.
Character Education
stop
think
act
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As teachers, it is not only our job to teach our subject matter, it is also our responsibility to ready students for life outside of school. In turn, we must integrate character education into our individual and school-wide curriculum's.
Respect, Responsibility, Empathy, Integrity, and Perseverance don't always come naturally. I try to teach students these concepts on day one and require that they live and breathe them both inside and outside my classroom. I achieve this by enacting the "STAR" system I was taught throughout my education grades K-12.
For more on the enactment of the STAR system and enforcement policies, please click the button.
Communication
Maintaining open communication with all students, parents/guardians, individual students with special needs as well as their families is imperative to success in the classroom. In fact, open communication is something I stress in my classroom for all students as a means to ensure optimum learning and academic success.
Quality Education for All
My education, research, and teaching experience in both rural and urban school districts has revealed where a young person is raised effects much more than their mailing address; it often influences the type and quality of education he or she receives (Berliner, 2005).
Exceptions, Adaptations, Inclusion
In education, one size does NOT fit all.
Community Involvement
It's been said that Millennials “have less civic engagement and lower political participation than any previous group. This is a generation that would have made Walt Whitman wonder if maybe they should try singing a song of someone else” (Time Magazine, Millennials:the Me Me Me Generation).
Let's be honest, this mindset goes beyond those born since the 1980's. Check out John Bresland's video essay, "The Seinfeld Analog," to see how most Americans prefer a comedy about nothing over the harsh realities of far off lands.
While I love Bresland's essay and historical data supports the theory that Americans prefer comedy to tragedy, I DO believe Millennials are just as engaged with world around them as anyone else, especially in the political atmosphere following the 2016 elections. In fact, it is because of essays like Bresland's that I believe it is important teachers get students interested and involved with their local community, their nation, and their world.
Click the button to check out some of the community service projects my students and I have participated in.
Learning & Assessing
All students have a range of experiences, which generate ideas and shape how they make sense of information and thus, construct knowledge. As such, learning and assessing must be done in a multitude of ways starting with students self-assessments and anticipatory guides.
It is important to uncover my students’ prior knowledge in order to help them become cognizant of their own ideas and opinions, so that they may build upon and refine them during the learning process. In turn, learning activities must then be structured to appeal to all seven styles of learning.
I typically start with a big lofty question. Like Socrates, I try to pull the students towards their own understanding of concepts. I do this by asking LOTS of questions, empowering my students to think, investigate, research, analyze, discuss, and share. I facilitate this by teaching concepts directed towards the highest achieving students and scaffolding with the lowest in mind. My unit plans, learning objectives, and learning activities are all created with the spherical version of Blooms Taxonomy in mind. To learn more about this revised version of Bloom's Taxonomy, check out the educational blog, Loosely Speaking
In order for students to practice and achieve higher order critical thinking skills, I utilize project-based teaching. While students are often quizzed and tested on route facts and data to ensure they are putting in the work to read, research, take notes, etc, at the end of all units is a project.
Projects are the best way for students to use the experience and information they gained and put it to good use. These projects may be text essays, and/or "creative translations" of essays, such as websites, games, paintings, songs, etc. This is what the 21st century learner wants, needs, and exceeds at.
This is also what a 21st century economy is demanding for the future. We are no longer an isolated manufacturing economy. I believe we are in the midst of a global economy and America is at the heart of it. We are the innovators. We must produce new ideas and present them in new ways. This is what our students need to be preparing for through practice.
Classroom
Of the upmost importance is the community aspect of the classroom: the amount of comfort it can bring students, the level of participation it encourages, and the effectiveness of inclusion and differentiation it allows for.
When an open forum for communication is established, students will not only comfortably discuss similarities, they will celebrate their differences, and consider a variety of controversial issues as well. Not only will students participate in the classroom community, but they will also participate in the community in which they live.
For much more on how a positive classroom community is established and enforced, please click on the button below.
Virtual Classroom
Students today are more comfortable with the concept of sharing than ever before, especially with an online community. YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, are just a few of the exceedingly popular apps/sites students are uploading to at an exponential rate. As a teacher of 21st century learners, it is important to use these apps and other technological tools to our advantage.
In the past, I have used both Twitter and Facebook for classroom use; I have also utilized Class Websites (Google Sites, Moodle.com, Blackboard, etc). Currently, I am investigating new ways to incorporate Instagram and figuring out ways in which cell phones can be an asset rather than a distraction. For example, I'd like to try using the website, polleverywhere.com.
Not only are computers and websites beneficial in the classroom, but apps made available via smartphones can also be an asset in the classroom. Just like adults, students enjoy having the dictionary, a calculator, their calendar, and the Internet in their pockets. Why are teachers taking that away as if it doesn't exist and they don't use it hourly? Instead of fighting the cell phone, I say, EMBRACE IT!
I first tried using an educational app in 2016. While coaching a Sophomore or Junior Varsity softball team, I utilized the app, Remind. The girls and I loved it as a form of open communication. I have also seen high school classrooms utilize the app, Kahoot, a website/app in which teachers or students can create educational classwide games in which answers are submitted and scores are calculated using cell phones or laptops. For more on this topic, check out this article on the NEA site explaining the statistics available regarding smartphone usage and just how helpful they can be in secondary schools.
Lifelong Learning
Learning is a lifelong process. Life is experience and thus, all experiences are educational if given time to ponder them. Continued growth and development as an instructor is just as essential to an instructor as it is a student. Personally, I am interested in finding news ways to adapt my teaching to the needs of new generations of students.
Currently, this means I must continue to educate myself on technology and the ways in which it can be webbed into education. This also means finding ways to incorporate civics into the classroom as well as service learning projects. I also have a strong want to continue to improve my version of the "Senior Project."
The Senior Project is what perhaps the best way I have taught what, why, and how lifelong learning is. I highly encourage you to read more on The Senior Project in the Teaching Documentation section of this site. If you have any suggestions for improvements or helpful criticism, I welcome you to email me.
Not only do I want to improve my lessons and teach my students the importance of lifelong learning, but I want to improve in my methods of communication with students parents and guardians. Communication is a key to success in nearly all things. As the saying goes, "It takes a village to raise a child." In turn, a students' learning and educational experience is one that should be openly shared with ones families and community in order to provide the necessary support to fully help a student.