Hi, I am Christine O'Shea. I currently serve as a Fifth Grade Teacher at Hyalite Elementary School, Bozeman, MT and have experience as a grant administrator for (NESSP) Nasa Earth Science Space Pipeline. I am a teacher consultant on NSF Grant at MSU Bozeman for Spatial Skills Curriculum. I have over 12 years of teaching experience in grades 1-5. I served on numerous state and district committees in science. I participated in various math and science professional development grants over the years involving lesson study, best practices and curriculum development. I participated in the Montana Partnership with Regions for Excellence in STEM (MPRES) grant and am a certified trainer to train other teachers about NGSS and best practices in science and engineering. I helped provide training on NGSS standards to K-12 teachers in Bozeman School District. I served as a trainer/online instructor through MSU Billings, delivering science professional development to teachers and currently teach Office of Public Instruction (OPI) Hub classes online. I served on the OPI review team for Science Standards adoption and currently assist OPI and 3rd party with research on NGSS 3D assessment creation and delivery. I was awarded numerous grants to bring science and technology resources to the classroom and school. Prior to teaching, I worked in Business Development and Sales Management for various companies in the technology industry. I earned a BA from Mt. St. Mary’s University of Maryland, an MAT from George Fox University and am a National Board Certified Teacher.
After ten years of teaching, when I was teaching third grade, I had my one of my most challenging years as a teacher. I had a class of 25 students, twelve of which had experienced significant traumatic events in their lives. I knew trauma was an issue for some children, as I had one or two students over the years but I had never experienced so many in one classroom. Undesirable behaviors were rampant that year and I did not have the level of tools necessary to help them or myself. I felt that I was always putting out fires with little time to teach uninterrupted. Things got better finally, when I reached out to administration for help in late fall. I got some additional aide assistance which helped with supporting students. I felt that it was hard to distance myself from the many traumatic events that all these students were dealing with at home. After finishing the year, I wanted to educate myself on the topic of childhood trauma and adverse childhood experiences (ACE's). I wanted to learn more about strategies to use in my classroom for helping these children as well as coping strategies for me. I wanted to learn what ACE's I had and how that might affect my teaching practice. This is what started my thirst for knowledge on the topic which seemed a perfect fit for my capstone project. I also wanted to extend this learning to other teachers in my building so they would have more knowledge should they experience this in their own classrooms. I discussed the idea with my teammate, Dacia Lackey who decided to join me on this project. I was so happy she did.
Hyalite is one of the larger title 1 elementary schools in our district. We are one of the more diverse schools in the area serving around 470 students with approximately 45% of our students qualifying for free or reduced lunch. In 2017-2018, 55% of our students were proficient/advanced in Reading compared to 70% district wide. In math, we had 54% of our students proficient/advanced compared to 59% for the district.
See below report card for Hyalite Elementary School for more background information about my workplace:
Context - Part II: Connecting Self-Assessment to Your Context
How might your own biases and personal values impact your ability to effectively reflect on your practice?
At which level (emerging, developing, performing, or transforming) in the progressions are you currently for each of your four chosen competencies?
Connecting Assessment of Diverse Stakeholders to Your Context
My work with diverse stakeholders, shared learning experiences, and how I anticipated my instructional mindset evolved during the TLI process:
With regard to Group Processes: We discussed stakeholder opinion on how staff at our school would react to another behavior initiative. I asked clarifying questions and shared some of my potential ideas about becoming Trauma Informed School. I asked their thoughts about becoming a Trauma informed school. I find when asking clarifying questions, you can really get at underlying thoughts a person has about a topic. Asking questions and then listening to stakeholders puts them at ease. I discussed how informing our teaching staff about available resources might be a way to alleviate concerns about starting a new behavior program or approach and sharing ACE’s (Adverse Childhood Experiences) self-assessment as a step to bridge the gap. The powermapping activity helped us pinpoint which staff members were more reluctant to take on this initiative and which staff members would be supportive. This informed our next step of education for staff.
With regard to Reflective Practices: I talked about how a book study and ACE self assessment might be a way for staff to become more informed about a trauma informed approach. I talked about how reading more on the topic over the summer helped me reflect on my practice and how the same approach could be valuable to other staff members were they given the resource. I shared ideas about how a trauma informed approach that deals with follow through and consequences would be a possible game changer if that could be the end goal. I shared how a leadership team could be formed to guide this approach through following an implementation guide I discovered this summer. We moved to a position of using that first may prove the best idea and take a step back. This would give leadership team more information in order to go to staff education approach on this topic. During our needs assessment, I let the broad and diverse group of stakeholders talk/reflect and I listened carefully and took notes. I asked for all stakeholders to talk about their feelings about our proposed ideas and prompted each member to share what they thought in a roundtable like session. I employed a variety of communication methods including emails, google classroom and in person discussion during our book study. (see evidence under Do tab)
How my awareness of those from different cultures, experiences, and backgrounds inform your chosen project.
I am acutely aware how much of our population stems from poverty and all the challenges that come with that. I have attended professional development on the cycle of poverty and want to be sensitive as a teacher to its effects on students and parents. Part of my project will involve developing socially just learning environments which involves nondiscriminatory actions toward children from poverty. Many of the children experiencing trauma come from poverty (some of which are native american, hispanic or mixed race). Teachers often hold bias toward lower class children and I want to bring this notion to the forefront. We need to treat children and adults from poverty in an equitable manner.
Artifact: Coaches Approval Form