Teacher Appreciation Week
At the BIF Student Experience Lab, we’ve had the honor of working with teachers across the world. We wanted to take this time to give a special shout out to some local educators who have been working hard to engage their students. We’re honored to work with such amazing people everyday and look forward to continuing to collaborate with them to transform education. The following teachers have inspired us and as a way to honor all the hard work they’ve done, we’ve compiled a short list of some innovative educators we’ve worked with in the past couple weeks as part of our Deeper Learning Research.
Flavia Molea Baker
Flavia is an ESL teacher at Cumberland High School. Flavia was also an ESL learner, and uses her experience to help connect to students who step into her classroom, sometimes without knowing any English at all. Knowing the struggles of learning a new language in a classroom, Flavia understands the difficulties of trying to read foreign language but still wants to give her students the experience of reading and analyzing text to understand language. Flavia is using a book made entirely from emojis called “Book from the Ground” by Bing Xu! By using the popular symbols to tell a story, Flavia has created lessons around the book to get her students thinking about language and communication. Flavia also manages #RITELL, which develops, maintains and promotes professional expertise in English language teaching for speakers of other languages in Rhode Island, and if you’re a an ESL teacher be sure to check it out!
Carolyne Kellner
Carolyne is an art instructor at Providence Career and Technical Academy (PCTA). Carolyne is on a mission to bridge the gap between art and her students’ career passions. Carolyne uses art practices to engage students with their interests. For example, after discovering one student’s interest in being a baker, Carolyne had students mold clay for ceramics in the same way a baker would knead dough. Direction like this are useful to better connect to real world skills, so even if students aren’t pursuing a future as an artist they can still use some of the creative practices to appreciate the skills needed for their elected trade. Ideas like this are simple yet effective, and we love the added touch of making her instruction personalized for her students career interests!
Nick Bousquet
Nick is an educator at Scituate High School . As a Math teacher, Nick is working hard to bring engineering into his classroom. There are often too few opportunities for students to learn about engineering in traditional K-12 classrooms. Our work with organizations, schools, and foundations to bring STEM education into our classrooms has given us insight into the critical need of having more STEM educators like Nick introducing engineering into the curriculum. Nick is also going to be teaching a new class to teach his students to develop mobile apps! We are grateful for teachers like Nick who are serving their students’ interests in STEM, and providing them with creative hands-on projects.
Lucy Fandino
Lucy is a 9th grade English teacher at Hope High school. Lucy has made it a mission to make her students feel welcomed and comfortable in the classroom. She launched a successful GoFundMe.org project last year to transform her classroom into a more upbeat, personal space for her students. Lucy is also working hard to meet students where they are, often catering what she teaches to the interests of her students, and making sure what they read is culturally meaningful to them. Through empathy, and some serious interior design skills, Lucy has transformed her classroom from a room in a school to a place where students are comfortable learning and connecting.
Maya Chavez Akin
Maya teaches 9th grade at Dr. Jorge Alvarez High School in Providence, RI. Maya has introduced project based learning (PBL) into her classrooms. Maya uses the power of projects to teach academic content as well as engage her students in community. She worked with students last year on a project around an environment and community. Students researched the history of a once polluted pond that their school now sits on to examine the dangers of pollution, and the effects it has on their current environment. This year Maya’s students are working on another project around the food served at their school. Her class is partnering with a local farmer’s’ market community in order to redesign school lunch! Maya’s dedication to her 9th graders goes beyond making them good students — she is empowering them to be critical thinkers and change-makers in their community. (For those of you interested in PBL you can learn more here.)
We are grateful for the incredible talent we have in Rhode Island educators. Across the state, teachers have shown us the amazing things they are doing in their classrooms to empower students as lifelong learners. We know teaching is no small task — preparing students for an uncertain future and to solve the incredibly complex and critical problems of tomorrow is a colossal endeavor. We look forward to a day where all teachers are fully supported in all their professional pursuits, and their work is regarded as the single most important public service a nation can provide. We can’t wait to see what amazing things teachers do next, and look forward to continuing to work with educators to change the world. Thank you to all teachers for touching the lives of so many!
