High School Assistant Principal
Leading Staff Development & Building Community
As the Assistant Principal leading professional development and building community amongst staff plays an important role in my work. I use a variety of games and tools that we later use in our mentoring program, giving teachers the opportunity to experience the activities first.
Service Learning
I lead service learning in the high school, supporting students and representing our section in our school-wide service learning committee. I organize a yearly Service Learning Fair, inviting both outside organizations and students to share opportunities with their our student body. I am expanding the role that teachers play in our service learning program through professional development and incorporating service learning into our mentoring program. I invite students to present to our service learning committee to share the great work they do with our larger community.
Building Positive School Culture
Building a positive school culture is an integral part of my work. From welcoming students in the morning, walking the halls during recess, to sending students off to the weekend Friday afternoons with high-fives and music, I have a consistent presence. Above, I can be seen reffing an Inter-Class Competition soccer game, attending a local hospital to support a group of students’ service project, and asking students to show up for one another.
Active in the Community
My family and I are active in school community. We show up, we participate, and we host a variety of events. Above I can be seen playing the keyboard and singing in the staff band, Los Meesters, at our school-wide Art Fest and a member of the staff choir performing at our school’s Winter Celebration. I also organize and act as the Master of Ceremonies for our school’s Halloween celebration, which brings over 2,000 members of our community on campus to celebrate.
Lifelong Memories for Seniors
I help organize a variety of events and activities to build community for our seniors and give them lifelong memories. Above seniors are adding the final touches to their mural, parading through school in their graduation gowns, participating in an elementary-style PE day led by our ES PE teachers, and our annual senior slip ‘n slide. One new addition to our annual senior sleepover was the addition of parent letters to each of the seniors – there were many tears shed!
Warrior Robotics Coordinator
I designed and launched ASFG Warrior Robotics, an award winning 1st-12th grade co-curricular robotics program with the vision to be an inclusive, extensive, and competitive robotics program that focuses on enriching the whole learner. The program currently serves approximately 100 students and competes both at the local and national level in FIRST Robotics. The program is financially self-sufficient, with a yearly budget of approximately $65,000 USD based on enrollment fees.
Technology Integration Specialist
Parent Digital Citizenship Meetings:
Led 3 yearly parent-student meetings about Digital Citizenship and building a healthy relationship with technology. Each meeting included time for parents and their children to have guided conversations about family expectations with technology. Here are examples of two of the presentations for families with students in 7th Grade and 8th Grade.
LITT Meetings & Book Study
Building community and collaboration was the foundation of my work leading the Learning and Innovative Technologies Team. I expanded the number of members on the committee to include admin and teacher leaders from each section. Each year we had three main goals: supporting research and development projects, continuing the school-wide work with Digital Citizenship, and implementing our vision around technology and innovation.
Digital Citizenship Week
Designed and organized a yearly Digital Citizenship Week that provided bilingual activities for families to compete together with their children. In 2021 we had a total of 129 parents participate, 310 activities accessed, and 190 service hours completed by high school students. Here are links to the overview of activities for 2020 and 2021.
Middle School Technology Teacher
MacBook Bootcamp
The MacBook Bootcamp was a mastery-based unit where students worked individually and at their own pace to master skills with their newly school-issued MacBooks. Students had to work through and demonstrate their mastery by completing a variety of performance and knowledge-based tasks. Once they showed mastery, they would show a teacher to receive an access code that they used to submit a form, earning them a certificate and allowing me to track their progress. Learn more about this unit by reading my blog post Designing Your Own Micro-Crediential Bootcamp: a How-To with Resources.
Create a Magazine Using Design Process
This was a collaboration with Mexican Social Studies teacher where students had to turn their research and writing into a magazine. Students learned how to use design to effectively communicate complex information, how to responsibly seek inspiration, and use the tools in a publishing application to create a magazine. Here are the slides I used to introduce and guide the project.
Robotics and Movies
In collaboration with the 8th-grade science teacher, students learned about force and energy by designing and programming a LEGO Mindstorm robot. The unit combined concepts from science, engineering, and technology, as well as lab and computational thinking skills. In addition, students had to use foundational principles of video storytelling and editing to document their learning.
PodcastingI worked with the 5th-grade English Language Arts teacher to teach students how to effectively communicate their ideas using a podcast. Students had to learn the structure of a podcast and recording and editing skills to produce their final product. Students used this Slides presentation to complete each step at their own pace.
Middle School Social Studies & Elementary
The Crusades Rap Battle
Students researched, planned, wrote, and performed in our annual Crusades Rap Battle. Read more about the project and watch the students’ performances in my blog post Hip Hop in the Classroom: Writing Academic Raps.
The Dark Ages and Feudalism Blended Learning Unit
For this unit I used a Blended Learning approach by creating Dynamic Directions or HyperDocs, to lead students through digital challenges. Using the Blended Learning model allows me to focus and spend more time giving feedback to students instead of leading them through the instruction and delivery of content. It moves me from the front of the classroom to the students’ side. I was able to meet with students one-on-one, in partners, as well as pull small groups. I also held two full class discussions, to have student ask and discuss questions that they might have. By doing this I could gauge the students’ understanding and help facilitate their learning. Here are some pictures and my digital units: Europe in the Dark Ages & the Rise of Feudalism in Europe
The Dark Ages Dramatization
The video above is a short clip of a dramatization I do in class that acts out the roles under Feudalism. There is a student monarch (who gets a special chair and snacks to eat), nobles, knights, and many peasants. The student-nobles have to swear loyalty to get fiefs of land, and then “encourage” their peasants to make (color) enough food tabs to hire some knights. Just when they think everything is running smoothly, Sir Kennedy of the North (our math teacher next door) busts in the room to announce “the Vikings are coming!” The students then have to build castles with desks and protect their peasants and lord from my vicious attack of paper balls! Finally, the students write a journal entry from the point of view of their character as a way to review and reflect on the experience. The class is a ball of controlled chaos that no one forgets, and that future students look forward to doing!
Africa Through Political Cartoons
Students in this unit learned about the exploration, enslaving, and colonization of Africa, and at the same time learned how to analyze political cartoons. To demonstrate their knowledge students created political cartoons from the different view points of those involved throughout African history. Students shared their work in a ‘Gallery Walk’ and used Google Forms to receive and record their peer’s feedback. Below are a few examples of the student’s work and here is the HyperDoc used to practice analyzing political cartoons.
Current Events
Students explore the world around them every cycle in our Current Events program. Students are given choice by finding their own topic and determining what medium they will use to present. After students present we watch Flocabulary’s Week in Rap. Through this part of the lesson, students practice listening and note taking skills, partake in research, and learn to argue their opinions through debate and Socratic Seminars.
Here is an example of a student presentation using Kahoot to engage their audience.
This video shows students combining live presentation with Powtoon. Amazing!
Science: Animal Design Performance Assessment
In this performance assessment, students were challenged to design their own animal based on the features of their assigned ecosystem. Students had to brainstorm and organize the animal’s characteristics, draw and name the animal, create its food web, and describe how it maintains the balance of its environment. After students completed this part of the assignment, they were given a disaster card, which drastically changed their animals environment. They then had to redesign their animal based on how it would have evolved to its new ecosystem. Here is a link to the lesson plan and materials.
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