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Welcome to our classroom! It is an honor and a blessing to be your teacher this year. My name is Michelle Dillard and I am thrilled to be a part of the wonderful Ford community. I absolutely love teaching fifth graders- it's an exciting year filled with inquiry and independence. I've taught for over twenty years in the classroom, mostly as a fourth and fifth grade teacher. I've also worked as a reading specialist for striving third grade readers. I earned my Bachelor's degree in Early Childhood/ Elementary Education from Dallas Baptist University, and a Master's degree and certification in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education (ESL). I also earned National Board Certification as a middle childhood generalist (NBCT), the Master Teacher designation from the state of Colorado, the Presidential Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics and Science (PAEMST) in 2020 and am a Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms alumna from 2023-24 with field work in Ghana. I have served on the Colorado Department of Education’s 2022 Social Studies standards revision committee, a CDE peer reviewer for Colorado's collegiate teacher preparation programs, as a core team member of the PYP International Baccalaureate implementation for my first school, and as a district model classroom for math teachers. Some of my favorite trainings have included the Library of Congress Summer Teacher Institute, Adaptive Schools, PBL with the Buck Institute, Kagan Cooperative Learning Structures, and Add+Vantage Math.
It is my passion and privilege to help all kids grow as thinkers and learners by loving and educating the whole child, setting and meeting high expectations, and creating an environment of high engagement and choice. I am especially passionate about helping students see the meaning and significance of their learning locally and globally, and working to ensure engagement and empowerment for ALL learners.
My husband and I have been married for over twenty years and have three children in middle and high school. I love to read, spend time with neighbors and friends, play golf, watch baseball, enjoy the beauty of Colorado, relax with yoga, and sing.
I am excited to jump into another fantastic school year. All students are encouraged to engage with the world around them in meaningful ways and connect prior knowledge and experiences with new learning. To this end, purposeful conversations between your child and yourself, reading daily and talking about the content, and shared experiences prove invaluable to growing into a lifelong learner. Thank you for giving your child the gift of you!
Our Classroom Community:
The role of a student is complex and demanding, as they attune to behavioral, social, emotional and cognitive demands simultaneously. I love to help students “find their why” and strengthen their sense of personal control, competency and confidence. I will strive to do this by:
*Helping students see learning as a positive experience
*Fostering and establishing zones for deep learning
*Building students’ confidence in themselves as independent learners
*Modeling unconditional acceptance
*Building interdependence in a community of trust
Future-Ready Citizens:
I will focus on these eight C’s of learning that will help set students on a path of success through life:
Curiosity- The ability to ask questions and explore how the world works
Creativity- The ability to generate new ideas and to apply them in practice
Criticism- The ability to analyze information and ideas and to form reasoned arguments and judgments
Communication- The ability to express thoughts and feelings clearly and confidently in a range of media and forms
Collaboration- The ability to work constructively with others
Compassion- The ability to empathize with others and to act accordingly
Composure- The ability to connect with the inner life of feeling and develop a sense of personal harmony and balance
Citizenship- The ability to engage constructively with society and to participate in the processes that sustain it
We will use many learning strategies that empower students in these ways, including cooperative learning, depth and complexity, visible thinking, analysis of primary sources, and project-based learning. I will highlight some of these initiatives in parent partner newsletters.
Flexible Learning Environment:
I follow the model of responsive classrooms where students come first and the focus is on rigorous learning in a comfortable, trusting, and collaborative environment. Most of the time, students choose where to sit, with an emphasis on teaching students to know themselves as learners and what will work best for them. This will be paired with teacher-selected cooperative learning teams of students, as well as structured classroom management expectations for how students should act and interact with others. Research of flexible versus traditional seating indicates benefits in physical health, collaboration, problem-solving, and decision-making.
You will notice lots of seating options in our classroom, including stools, chairs, lap desks, standing desks, etc. Individual materials and supplies will be stored in a cubby or backpack and shared supplies are available for all students around the learning spaces.
Growth Mindset:
I am a firm believer in the power of growth mindset, and approach each year with the belief that all students are capable of learning and growing. Growth mindset is the belief that intelligence and ability are flexible traits and with effort and perseverance all students are capable of academic achievement.
Everyday, your child will be immersed in a growth mindset environment that is inclusive of all students and encourages taking educational risks. Students will be praised with specificity for approaching the process of learning with grit and determination. And they will grow in ways they never thought possible.
It’s very important to me that we are partners in your child’s educational journey. I would love your help in encouraging growth and improvement in your home. Here are some things you can do to extend and promote growth mindset:
-Encourage your child to take risks and tackle new challenges at school.
-Praise your child not for the ease with which he or she learns a concept but for the amount of effort put into learning.
-Communicate with me if the material is too easy for your child, so we can offer him or her sufficiently difficult learning challenges.
-Emphasize perseverance and effort in extracurricular activities.
All students will receive continual feedback from me highlighting an area in which they could use improvement. I’ll have plenty of feedback on all the great things your child is doing in class as well, and the growth messages will center on areas in which they need extra encouragement to tackle challenges.
The goal of growth messages is not to punish students for not doing well in a certain area; rather, it is to partner together to offer messages of encouragement and reinforce hard work and dedication as your student strives to learn a challenging concept. Remember, if students aren’t being challenged, they aren’t learning up to their potential! I strongly believe parents play a crucial role in their child’s educational experience, and growth messages are a way of strengthening our partnership in ensuring that your child has the best learning experience possible.
Innovation, Inquiry, and Authentic Assessment:
I value creating an innovative, open, creative and trustworthy place for students to grow, take risks, and feel comfortable in their own patterns of learning. Students deserve the opportunities to connect, grow and innovate not only with class content, but also with each other, the world around them and with me. I view culture as one of the most critical aspects to invite innovation and make the classroom a safe place to create, ask questions, and fail in order to learn.
By using authentic assessments, students are challenged and empowered in their learning. Through the use of checklists, rubrics, self-assessments, and individual end products, students take ownership of their own learning. Not only do they know the expectations before, during, and at the conclusion of a project/lesson, they know how to monitor their progress, as well as work collaboratively with peers through the critique and revision process.
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