Issues of Instructional Practice

The diversity of instructional practices is critical for establishing a supportive and effective educational environment for students that will maximize opportunities for academic success. Scholarship in these courses include a study of the fallacies of curriculum narrowing and its effects on instructional practices, how educators must approach instruction differently to address the educational challenges of students in foster care with emotional and behavior disorders and examining the responsibilities of educators in supporting foster care youth and leveraging their social and emotional capital through carefully designed instructional practices.

Seminar in Curriculum and Practice

Community Forum 2 - February 13, 2019

A literature review and poster presentation examined the root causes of curriculum narrowing. and identified fallacies regarding the origins and impact. The study identifies mitigation strategies for curriculum narrowing that include re-conceptualizing learning targets, instructional strategist, high-stakes testing and focusing on balancing autonomy and accountability. A surprising finding with the study was identifying that curriculum narrowing did not begin with No Child Left Behind (2001) but with the passing of the Elementary and Secondary Act (ESA) of 1965. This is indicated in the first chart on The Fallacies of Curriculum Narrowing poster. Another surprising finding is detailed on pages 31-32 in the literature review regarding how the well-balanced and aligned Minnesota state assessment model has mitigated curriculum narrowing and gained the support of teachers. The literature review identified eight fallacies to curriculum narrowing which I identified and refuted with research in a concise document which was provided to visitors to my Community Forum poster presentation.

Seminar in Educational Psychology / Special Education

A literature review examining research over a 20-year year span regarding foster care youth in special education programs who have emotional/behavioral disorder. The literature review identifies the role and responsibilities of educators to identify students with this disorder and to identify and implement various interventions. This literature review was fundamental in my scholarship and pursuit of research in the area of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE's) and trauma since the foster care system and students referred for special education services often have ACE's and trauma. A surprising finding from this literature review is the importance of early detection of emotional and behavior disorders. Page 10 identifies research showing the increased rate of behavior problems the older a child is first assessed for special education services and since foster care youth have a proportionally higher rate of early assessment than other students, they have significantly lower rates of adaptive behavior problems.

Seminar in Critical Pedagogy

A research paper and poster presentation examining the social and cultural capital of foster care youth. Foster care youth face many challenges including higher rates of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE's) and it is the responsibility of teachers to implement critical classroom and culturally relevant pedagogy. In addition, it is important to leverage the social and emotional capital of foster care youth with administration having the critical responsibility to establish policy to support teachers in this effort and to provide teachers with training as a means of the support. The lack of administrative focus on teacher training and establishment of policies that leverage te social capital of youth may be the reason for the surprising finding on pages 18 and 19 in the report that shows how some families look towards the justice system as a social service provider instead of schools. This brings up the question of why school is not considered the first choice for social services of foster care youth and why it is not featured in the model by Mayger et al. (2017) which is feature in the center of the research poster.

Leadership and Professional Development in Educational Technology

Artifacts from two culminating projects for this course on leadership and professional development. One artifact is a video tutorial regarding Google Keep created using Kaltura Capture and the accompanying final report and reflections document explaining the process for creating and implementing this professional development opportunity for the education staff at the Holocaust Memorial Center. Also included is a position paper which argues that online professional development can be constructivist through proper design and implementation. The importance of leadership and educational technology was greatly magnified as the COVID-19 pandemic forced education into the virtual environment. This occurred in the middle of this course therefore altering the original professional development plan. This change is explained on page 3 in the Professional Development section of the Final PD Report. This redirection led to the final product which is the Google Keep video tutorial below. It also led to the decision to write the position paper regarding how online professional development can be constructivist. I invite you to examine page 1 of the position paper where I identify the criticisms constructivist educators have regarding online professional development and learning. which leads into my argument that online learning is constructivist if designed and implemented properly.

"Teaching the Holocaust: Empowering Students"

Workshop conducted at the University of Michigan-Dearborn on October 18, 2019

This workshop was provided to pre-service teachers and focused on Echoes and Reflection,s, the premier Holocaust education resource, and the pedagogical principals for effective Holocaust instruction. The workshop was co-facilitated with another Ed.D. student, Karen Caldwell. The first artifacts is our annotated agenda that is color coded to indicate presentation responsibilities. Blue is my portion and green is Karen's. The two primary areas of focus for the workshop was teaching empathy using various primary sources including survivor video testimony, photographs, poetry and artwork. This aligns to the pedagogical principals of teaching the human story. A second area of focus was how to teach the Holocaust without traumatizing students, a technique we refer to as Safely In Safely Out. The two photographs provided showcases the opening activity that asks students to write their hopes and their concerns regarding teaching the Holocaust. A surprising moment during the workshop came from this activity because we decided to modify the activity due to the rich answers and discussion that came from their participation. The activity was modified by having the two groups categorize/cluster similar answers then review each others work to determine if they recommend adjusting the clusters. This modification worked surprising well, fostered deeper conversations and was a constructivist approach to the activity.

National Council for the Social Studies - November 23, 2019 Austin, TX

Community Forum 4 - February 10, 2020

A poster presentation of research conducted with Karen Caldwell, Ed.D. student, on how to teach empathy through literacy and shared stories. In addition to the poster, we developed a four-part companion lesson plan aligned to the C3 Social Studies Framework and the Common Core State Standards. The lesson plan was very popular and informed us of the importance of developing a companion document for participants to take with them so they can implement the research into their classrooms. The research poster was the first time using augmented reality which enhanced interaction with the poster content. The augmented reality allowed guests to visit websites, watch a video and download our contact information from a virtual business card using an augmented reality service called Zappar. This was very popular with participants and engaged participants more with the content on the poster. We also included the use of a laptop to access websites and videos referenced on the poster and in the lesson plan in case participants did not want to download the virtual reality app. This was a great idea because some people did not want to take the time to download the app so they could visit other posters but they did receive instructions for downloading and using the app at a later date/time.