Educator Spotlight - Gillian Baumener

Ms. Gillian Baumener

Ms. Gillian Baumener is a 6th-grade Writing and STEAM teacher at John Jacobs Elementary. She shared the following quote:

“Don’t ask your students what they want to be when they grow up. Ask them what problem they want to solve.” - Jaime Casap

Thank you Ms. Baumener!

This is the second post in a weekly series celebrating the hard work and dedication of the WESD Teacher Technology Leaders throughout the 2020-21 school year!

The Teacher Technology Leaders (TTLs) are a group of highly motivated teachers who provide leadership for their school sites in all areas related to technology integration. This includes exploring new methods of effective technology integration in their own classrooms, leading school and district level PD sessions, and providing personalized support to individual teachers at their site.

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Create an Instagram Story!

One day on Twitter, I came across a tweet from Ryan O'Donnell ( @creativeedtech ) in which he shared a Facebook template that could be used for students to demonstrate their learning. I clicked on the link to his website , and I was AMAZED at all the cool templates he had created for teachers to use for free! I decided to try using an Instagram template during a unit on the planets in our solar system. I wanted students to demonstrate what they learned about the different planets, but I wanted them to do it in a creative way. Here are the directions I gave to my students: Here are some student examples: Student Example #1 Student Example #2 Student Example #3 Student Example #4 I really enjoyed this activity, and I love how students familiar with hashtags were able to create and use them in clever ways! If I was to go back and do this again, I would spend some time working with students less familiar with social media and hashtags and give them some...

First Week of School

We just wrapped up our first week of school! I really enjoyed meeting and getting to know our new 5th grade students! Here are some of the activities we did to start building our classroom culture and learn more about each other: "All About Me" Google Drawing Students learned how to use some of the basic features of Google Drawings by creating a Drawing about themselves. The basic requirements were that they include their name, a picture of themselves, and text/images that describe their personalities or interests. I created an example to give them an idea of what it could look like. I used this activity last year, and I really enjoyed what my students created. However, I decided this year to give them more time to just play with and explore the tools in Google Drawing. I feel like this really paid off because students were able to discover how to use some of the tools and share with each other instead of just relying on me to show them how to use it. ...

Don't Use Coaches as "Fixers"

"It is tempting to ask coaches to work only with teachers who seem to be having difficulties with instruction or classroom management. We discourage this "fixer" approach to coaching for several reasons. First, if coaches are perceived as working only with those who struggle, other teachers may not reach out to coaches for support. Second, the coaching relationship becomes less about providing support for all teachers and more about remediation, in which only "struggling" teachers are assigned to the coach." - Jacy Ippolito and Rita M. Bean Based on the conversations I've had with coaches, this seems to be a common challenge. Coaches often struggle to get teachers to volunteer for coaching cycles because teachers don't want to be viewed as someone who needs coaching - like it's a negative thing. However, the truth is that ALL educators can benefit from good coaching. I think this is why it is important to try to c reate a diverse coaching ros...

Roxi Thompson

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