Bidding A Goodbye and Expressing Pride and Promise

 I will be retiring from the Blue Valley School District at the end of this school year.  While I am excited each year to see what our future educators might develop, this year I am especially proud. 
The students dealt with many challenges and obstacles as they drifted from virtual to hybrid to in-person learning and teaching platforms.  This year's CAPS Teacher Ed students have acquired skills very revised from  those of our normal program protocol, and they have handled it with class, with poise, and with a great attitude.  Long gone is my fear that I would have a difficult time "personalizing" activities this year and getting to know my students.  I feel close to them all and am so very proud of everything they have attempted, dreamed, and accomplished!

As a highlight, it is with a bittersweet feeling in my heart that I share some of the things the students have encountered and accomplished this year, and with it, bid goodbye to this portion of my life and look forward to another personal and professional chapter in my life.

HOME www.capsteach.org

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Twitter @wevegotclass 

Instagram @capsteachered 

A few of this year's projects:

• Simschool-an online simulation in which students could "teach" avatars and receive a culminating report giving them information about their strategies used and their effectiveness.  Simschool is a program well-researched and normally used by university programs.  We were the first high school program included.  Now...they have other high school programs wanting to become subscribers.  www.simschool.org 
  
• Virtual Teacher Academy-our students completed units of study in educational history and philosophies.  All work was submitted, and students received certifications from the Mary Lou Fulton School of Education at Arizona State University
• Kids' Konference-our students created and executed an entire conference for elementary students.  Our students did this all virtually, over Zoom, from their homes, while they were remote https://capsteachered.wixsite.com/kidskonference  Video from the event:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKVLNeAUVi8&t=1s 

	KIDS’ KONFERENCE 2021 This video is about KIDS’ KONFERENCE 2021 www.youtube.com

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• Virtual Teaching-during the school year, we had a group of students who met twice weekly with the virtual classes of Ms. Catherine Healy.  Our CAPS Teacher Ed students conducted tutoring sessions and breakout room study sessions and presentation sessions
• Students have spent 3-6 weeks in virtual and f2f classrooms.  During this time, students blogged regularly on their experiences and completed other assignments such as "what would you do" scenarios in which they discussed strategies they would use in classroom situations
• Portfolios--students again completed portfolios.  Those can be viewed in the link below or by going to our website and clicking on "portfolios"
• Twitter-students reached out to Will Richardson and others after watching their TED Talks and created real-world network connections to take their learning beyond the typical classroom

Teacher Ed Portfolios and Senior Slideshow (some students are still revising this week)

bit.ly/teachered20_21

I am sad to leave Teacher Ed this year, but I'm excited about my next steps.  Thanks for allowing us to share just a glimpse of some of the work our students do in our program!

Keeping Up with the Challenge!

Currently, all of our CAPS Teacher Education Internship students are working in classrooms around the district.  For more information, and a list of current mentors, visit our website at capsteach.org.  Our Foundations students are observing in various classrooms and are still working virtually two days a week with one of our Blue Valley virtual elementary teachers.

 

Right before Spring Break, three CAPS Teacher Education students participated in the Remake Learning Days Kansas City DeBruce Design Challenge.  Seniors Molly Thomas, Courtney Farley, and Junior Erin Fitzgerald met with other Metro teams during a two-week period that culminated in a Pitch Presentation.  The Teacher Ed students pitched their idea of creating “activity kits” for elementary teachers and students coordinated with objectives and essential questions for grade levels.  Below is a summary of what the students presented in their pitch.

 

HOOK

• We are CAPS Teacher Education students interested in future careers in education as well as students of the pandemic. 
• This year, most of school has been remote learning and hybrid learning. in fact we have never met the other half of our class in person. we have lost engagement that is important in school
• We remember elementary school as fun and engaging but because of the pandemic the elementary student’s experience has not been the same. Many are still remote, and the ones who are in person have lost the social aspect of learning
• How do we create a fun, engaging, and informative learning experience for elementary students and something to make the lives of their teachers a little easier?
• In the Fall of 2020, we created a conference for students called the Kids’ Konference
• Teachers could click a zoom link to take them to a synchronous activity to engage their class, led by us CAPS Teacher Education students
• Everyone involved had a good time and we discussed doing this again. 

 

SOLUTION 

• We are proposing to provide students and teachers with fun, informative and engaging activity kits that we call CREATIVITY IN A BOX.   As a way of analyzing our market, we  reached out to teachers in a survey format to see if this was something that they would be interested in. Of the 57 teachers who responded, over 83.9% said yes. Learning from our previous experience, we offered the option of activity kits, something these teachers would welcome into their classroom. Our current design is for students in person and if schools go back to virtual we can make adaptations as needed. 

SOLUTION DETAILS

• We want to provide these kits for teachers and elementary students in our district
• During our prototype round, we plan to target five classes 
• Each kit will contain the materials necessary to complete created activities, packaged in boxes with our CAPS Teacher Education logo and instructions
• The purchase of boxes, 5 packages of construction paper, and 5 craft kits containing varied materials, as well as miscellaneous objects give a total of $345
• We will gather feedback from those involved and, if we receive positive response, we will make plans to create more kits in the future for more classes of students.

• The kits will provide engaging activities to promote student learning
• One example for an activity emphasizes the idea of friendship. Teachers can read a book about friendship and then students will use the items provided in the box to create a gift for a person in the class. 
• This allows students to become friends with their classmates despite being in a pandemic. 

 

What value does it bring?

• These kits and the activities created will bring joy and learning to elementary students in a very trying time as well as make the lives of teachers easier

 

ASK 

• For this project, we will need to locate funds to purchase the materials necessary to create these and possibly additional kits 
• We hope that you can see the value in our project and help us to make the livesteachers easier and students more engaging.

 

This was a great experience for our students, and it laid the groundwork for a potentially inspiring project for next Fall.

 

Follow us on Twitter @wevegotclass

 

Finally...Change is Coming

 CAPS Teacher Education will be participating soon in a long-awaited opportunity—working in classrooms in person!  So far this school year, the
Teacher Education students have been zooming in to classrooms to help with various activities and even managed to provide online activities for students and their teachers with their Kids’ Konference held in January.  The students are excited to step into the environments created by our awesome teachers and have an even more robust experience as future teachers.

 

Along with their classroom experiences, the Teacher Ed students are still learning through other projects and activities.  They have welcomed guest speakers from Hawaii and Kansas and local university students and professors.  In addition, they still are practicing teaching skills in SimSchool, an online teaching simulation, creating substitute folders, designing learning experiences and lesson plans, writing their philosophies of education, and level 2 students are even designing their own Canvas courses.  

 

Follow our CAPS Teacher Education adventures on Twitter @wevegotclass.  Also, check out our website at http://bit.ly/capsteacheredweb and see some of our activities in action at http://bit.ly/aboutcapsteachered

The MOTE of REMOTE

The students in the CAPS Teacher Education program have been patiently
awaiting a time when they can walk into a classroom, arriving to work with teachers and students, experiencing first-hand a day in the life of a practicing educator.  This semester has been difficult, but the students have not lost hope.  

Creating lesson plans seems superficial to them...something detached from students and the educational process, but it is hoped that soon they can again walk physically into a classroom and feel the surrounding awesomeness of being a teacher

In the same way, listening to tales of misled classroom management, watching TED talks about the future of education, listening to speakers discuss university requirements for teacher licensing, and zooming in to the occasional classroom are not allowing them to touch and feel this profession of their interest.

Soon, students...soon...soon you will be able to fully experience the greatest profession in the world.