Teaching Experience Overview
Long Term Substitute Teaching
Senior English and Journalism/Newspaper: At the end of the 2012-2013 school year I had the opportunity to long term substitute teach for 12th grade English classes and a 9-12th grade Journalism and Newspaper classroom. I spent my time taking on the responsibilities and requirements of a full time teacher. During this time I taught and formulated my own unit on Shakespeare's Hamlet. The unit focused on the essential themes of revenge, relevance of Hamlet today, and Socratic Circle discussions. It was my responsibility to educate the senior students on the text, its themes and to be successful in a Socratic Circle discussion using questions related to Hamlet. The Socratic Circle was a common assessment and was required to be completed with a passing grade or the students would be unable to graduate. I worked closely with special education teachers, ESL teachers and graduation counselors to ensure that all students passed the course and graduated.
7th Grade English Language Arts: From November 2013-January 2014 I had the opportunity to long term substitute teach for a 7th grade English Language Arts classroom. I spent time taking on the responsibilities and requirements of a full time teacher. During this time I taught students to write narrative stories focusing on various topics. Essential outcomes for this unit included students being able to create real or imaginary stories using literary elements in an organized paper. Some literary devices included personality traits, dialogue, plot structure and some figurative language. It was my responsibility to educate the 7th grade students on various short stories, plot structure and grammar/punctuation. I worked closely with special education teachers (attending IEP meetings), ESL teachers and I worked on a team consisting of four other educators that included a Social Studies teacher, Science teacher, Math teacher and Special Education teacher.
9th Grade English: From January 2014-February 2014 I had the opportunity to long term substitute teach for a 9th grade English classroom. During this time I taught students how to formulate an argumentative essay using the text of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Together we worked through appropriate arguments, counterarguments, rebuttals and citing textual evidence. I spent my time taking on the responsibilities of a full time teacher. It was my responsibility to educate the freshmen students on the text, its themes and to write a successful argumentative essay related to Romeo and Juliet. I worked closely with special education teachers, ESL teachers and counselors to ensure students passed this common assessment required to pass English 9A. I also taught another section of freshmen English which required students to complete an I-Search essay. The assessment used the texts of The Odyssey by Homer and The Diary of A Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and a focus on the theme of decision making. Students created an in-depth research essay using decision making as a connection to deeper level thinking.
9-12th Grade Consumer Science: From March 2014-April 2014 I had the opportunity to long term substitute teach for a 9-12th grade Parenting, Family Living and Preparing for the Real World classroom. During this time I taught student various lessons focused on content related to their specific class. It was my responsibility to educate the students according to the textbook curriculum. I was also responsible for students within the Preparing for the Real World class to ensure they graduate. This class is made of senior students who learned how to create a resume, cover letter, thank you letter, references, etc. to prepare for an interview. Within the Parenting class students learned about relationships with children and what is appropriate to function as a parent when it comes to behavior and interactions with children. Within the Family Living classes students analyzed relationships among family members and society in terms of negative and positive relationships.
9th Grade English: From April 2014-May 2014 I had the opportunity to long term substitute teach for a 9th grade English classroom. During this time I taught students how to write a research paper blended with an argumentative approach. Students read the book Night by Elie Wiesel and applied textual evidence from the novel and online sources to support the topic of human rights violations. While reading Night we focused on close reading approaches (which can be found in the Student Work tab) as well as how to cite sources to support claims.
Upward Bound English Teacher/Tutor
Finally, I included material depicting my time with the Monroe County Community College Upward Bound program. A program where students are supported being first generation college attendees and degree holders. The summer of 2014 will be the start of my third year with the program.
