Our Charlene Tuttle, RI Teacher of the Year, has been spreading her spirit of collaboration around our Ocean State. I spent some time with Ms. Tuttle to learn more about her journey as RI Teacher of the Year.
For any of you that know Ms. Tuttle, you have experienced her excitement and joy for teaching and inspiring our students. She is most inspired to share her knowledge and increase the opportunity of S.T.E.A.M. education to our students. S.T.E.A.M. is the integration of science, technology, engineering, arts and math. Ms. Tuttle is traveling around RI with the Department of Education sharing her beliefs, experiences and teaching practices with other educators to increase collaboration of S.T.E.A.M. education for all RI students.
Once a week Ms. Tuttle is working with the RI Department of Education on two topics that are important to her 1.) Collaboration and 2.) S.T.E.A.M.. She hopes that she can engage educators from one side of the state to the other to share their high quality teaching practices, spread compassion through education and to bring students from different schools together to learn from each other. Most recently Ms. Tuttle collaborated with a group of teachers in the Northern part of the state to learn more about her SeaPerch ROV project that is well known among our 6th graders. One goal for Ms. Tuttle is to bring these students together in the spring to experiment with their ROVs in a local pool with our Jamestown students. What a way to celebrate their learning through collaboration!
When asked what she likes most about her experience as the RI Teacher of the Year, Ms. Tuttle stated, “It’s the opportunity I have to share my excitement of collaboration with other amazing teachers around the state.” She is not only collaborating with her 6th grade team at Lawn, or the other Jamestown teachers, she is now reaching out to teachers across the state to share her lessons. Ms. Tuttle is creating new relationships with other teachers that will enhance learning opportunities for her own students.
You can learn more about Ms. Tuttle’s adventures as the RI Teacher of the Year by following her blog posts. https://tuttletoy.blogspot.com/