TPACK in the Classroom: High School French Class

When I was in high school, there were very few classes that made it a point to integrate technology in a meaningful way that would enhance our learning... except one.

In high school, my French teacher, Mme Duquette, always seemed to have a way to incorporate technology of some sort into what we were learning. Whether it be making movies and having us voice over the visual component, having us record ourselves reading or having a conversation, creating comic strips written in French, to world interactive maps, there was always some way for us as students to reinforce and build on our learning.

Specifically, one of the most crucial moments that I remember as a student in the class, as well as a student teacher in the class, where the various recording that we had to do. Being first taught the words, the phrases, and the syntax, Mme Duquette supplied us with all the resources that we needed in order to properly speak in French. However, the point of the recordings was a way for her to check in on our development, our pronunciation (which was the thing I struggled most with), and to make sure that we understood the complex syntax of the language. In addition to acting as a formative assessment tracking our understanding, Mme Duquette also used the records as an opportunity to individually provide the support that each student needed. Example, since I struggled with pronunciation, Mme Duquette would use records as a chance to correct my mistakes by sending me proper pronunciations of words I struggled with. In a subtle way that allowed me to correct my mistakes without being embarrassed in front of my classmates for my inability to speak, I received the help I needed in a sort of 1:1 manner.

As Mme Duquette incorporated the use of technology into her pedagogy, as she provided many ways for us to use technology in a way that would appease our learning styles as well as our individual needs as students, I feel that I took more out of her class than out of any other class. By the time senior year rolled around, I had gone from a timid Freshman unsure of my capabilities to speak foreign language to a enthusiastic senior who was more confident in her ability to speak French, but who also made note of the various forms of activities used in French class to hopefully one day apply it to my own classroom (fun fact, I was awarded most-improved French Student my at the end of my senior year, but honestly I'm still not great at pronunciation). 

I feel I had a positive experience with the TPACK model in my French class, even though I am not sure that was the intention of my teacher to follow it. Today, I would be interested to see what suggestions Mme Duquette could make to help me to have the same sort of model in my future Math classroom. Given that French and Math are two totally distinct fields, I want to learn how to have such a successful model of teaching and learning within my classroom.

Bringing Community into the Classroom

Hey y'all

So as part of an assignment for my EDU223 class, we were asked to think of ways to incorporate community into our classroom and curriculum in an enriching and effective way.

As many of y'all know by now, I am a math concentration, so, being the hot mess that I am, I immediately started to panic:

HOW CAN I INCORPORATE COMMUNITY INTO MY CLASSROOM? WHAT DO YOU MEAN INCORPORATE COMMUNITY INTO MY CLASSROOM? I'M GOING TO TEACH MATH, NOT HISTORY OR ART OR ENGLISH? HOW THE HECK DO I DO THIS?

I'm going to be frank, this panic has not completely subsided, but after thinking about it some, I realized there are a couple avenues you can go down depending on your topic of study and your unit.

If you were approaching this quest of community involvement in the classroom as a statistics teacher, you could send your kids home and have them poll their family and friends about all sorts of stuff, ranging from favorite flavor of ice cream to where and and when they were born. After students return to class with their data, you could begin a lesson using the statistics they collected to teach probability, related events and the probability of an outcome,
as well as other statistics-y things (I haven't take statistics yet, so don't be too judgmental on my lack of examples on how to incorporate that data).

A project like this could meet the Common Core Mathematics standards:

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSS.CP.A.2
Understand that two events A and B are independent if the probability of A and B occurring together is the product of their probabilities, and use this characterization to determine if they are independent.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSS.CP.A.5
Recognize and explain the concepts of conditional probability and independence in everyday language and everyday situations. For example, compare the chance of having lung cancer if you are a smoker with the chance of being a smoker if you have lung cancer.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSS.CP.B.6
Find the conditional probability of A given B as the fraction of B's outcomes that also belong to A, and interpret the answer in terms of the model.


As a geometry teacher, you could take a walk around down and examine the architecture of the city. Different house-styles have different features, and therefore serve different purposes. You could have your students make note of which styles of houses they see, take pictures of them and their roofs to measure the angle of the trusses used in it's construction, as well as research why different styles of houses use different roof designs and their purpose. Though this is not an activity where students directly interact with community members, it can teach students a lot about the original development of the city, the though processes behind building design, as well as the why these designs were picked over others. Additionally, this can be a great time to look at and find various geometric shapes in the community (eq circular cylinders being modeled through trees) and describing them.

A project like this can meet Common Core Mathematics Standards:

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSG.MG.A.1
Use geometric shapes, their measures, and their properties to describe objects (e.g., modeling a tree trunk or a human torso as a cylinder).*

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSG.MG.A.3
Apply geometric methods to solve design problems (e.g., designing an object or structure to satisfy physical constraints or minimize cost; working with typographic grid systems based on ratios).*

Additionally, if you're looking for someone to come in as a guest speaker, you could reach out to someone from the local historical society to come in and to bring in either sale-records of stores, or tax documents that students would be able to look at and go through the math of, seeing what percentages of someone's income went to groceries and/or taxes, giving students a real-world example of how people are suppose to manage their money.


Though it may not be as easy as other concentrations (looking at you English and Social Studies), there are ways to incorporate community into a math classroom. And since it's easy to panic about such things (like I am right now), the best advice I can give a fellow Secondary Ed- Mathematics major is to breathe. Math is the hardest subject, and we will get through it, even if it requires a mental break down or five. You can do it.

Breathe.

You got this.

My Journey to Becoming an Educator: Three Wise Teacher Project

Hey Y'all

As part of a project for one of my classes, we were tasked with reaching out the people (teachers, mentors, friends, etc) who inspired us to become educators. I feel like this is something that is not done enough, and I feel very lucky to be put in a situation where I'm not only required to reach out to thank the people in my life for the influence they have had on me, but where I am also required to ask them for advice. As someone going into the field of education, I do not want to be anything but the best for my students, therefore I feel this was the perfect opportunity to improve upon my practices, as well as my pedagogy.

The project, otherwise known as the Three Wise Teachers Project, required us to do two things:

1.) Think of at least three people who have impacted you on your journey to becoming an educator, reach out to them and thank them for the impact they made on you.

2.) Ask the person if they have any resources that they would be willing to share that would help us develop as educators.

I reached out three people:

My high school French teacher, Mrs. Duquette, the assistant director of the University of Maine at Farmington TRIO Upward Bound Program, and my role model, Elyse Pratt-Ronco, and lastly my professor for my EDU 102/103 class that I took during my first semester of college.

I contacted everyone through various means; I reached out through Facebook, through email, as well as in person. Though I reached out in different ways, all of these women seemed touched by my words of thanks. Immediately, they all thanked me for my kind words, and all were exceptionally excited to provide me resources to help me on my journey to becoming an educator. 

While I am still waiting to hear back from Heather about tangible resources, I believe she gave me  the most important resource I could ever have as an educator. My senior year in high school, I had the opportunity to act as a student teacher for one of Heather's mid-level French classes. In this role, she gave me my first real taste of lesson planning, which I had no idea would be so helpful at the time. My had to plan, design, execute and assess a unit based on French food and it's culture. Though I think I did not take it as seriously as I should have, being able to act as a student teacher for her confirmed and solidified my desire to pursue education as a career, and I feel so blessed to have been in her class.

Elyse introduced me to many resources specific to educating students from low-income backgrounds. Working specifically with kids who are low-income first-generation college students, Elyse has been overwhelmingly supportive in my desire to learn and to support students from this background (fun fact, I'm a low-income first-generation college student!) Specifically, she introduced me to "Savage Inequalities" by Johnathan Kozol, and "Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty: Strategies for Erasing the Opportunity Gap" by Paul Gorski. I feel that, as a student who attended a school where sixty percent of student qualified for free and reduced lunch, I had the support systems needed in order for me to be able to succeed, both in my post-secondary goals, as well as emotionally as I overcame my struggles. Had I not had programs like TRIO Upward Bound, I don't know if I would be in college, let alone studying to become an educator. Thus, I feel that being able to recognize and provide support for students from disadvantaged backgrounds is the most important thing an educator can do. 

Clarissa Thompson was one of my first professor I had at UMF, and she introduced me to so many great resources. Ranging from comic book versions of mathematics textbooks to websites like the Cult of Pedagogy (specifically https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/teacher-fellowship/) and Bedtime Math, I've learned so much about what it means to be an educator from her, as well as through the resources she's provided me. As I have a mathematics concentration, at times I feel that at times it can be hard to have a growth mindset about venturing away from the lecture-style teacher-centric classroom associated with math. Therefore, I feel that as she not only provides resources to aid all teachers, as well as acting as a resource for her students, Clarissa has shown me that math can be so much more than a boring lecture. Math can be an exciting, enthralling experience in which student learn more than the properties of numbers and equations, it can be an experience that shapes their entire outlook on mathematics as a subject. 

Honestly, I cannot express how much I admire and appreciate all that these women have done for me, and I hope to one day as great of an educator, and as great of a person as they are.

Google Apps in the Mathematics Classroom: A Narrative.

As a future math teacher, I still struggle to see how technology can be integrated into the classroom. However, I feel that the Google Apps Forums and Sheets provide avenues in which students are able to incorporate technology into the classroom.

Imagine...
You are a mathematics teacher who's been working diligently to incorporate technology into your classroom, as you know how educators are able to do so in other classes, and you want to give your students the opportunity to explore technology in all of their core academic classes.
The night before, you created a Google form to poll your students of their hobbies, interests, and favorite things. Upon the arrival of your students, you administer the Google Form that you created. You don't tell your students the purpose of the activity, but rather just tell them to take ten minutes to fill it out at the beginning of the class. As students start finishing, one by one the rows on a Google Sheet that is linked to the form begin filling with information. You are able to see whose favorite sports team is the Patriots, what extracurricular activities your students participate in, and what flavor of ice cream is everyone's favorite.
Though your students don't realize, you are about to teach them about probability, and how to create graphs using the information they have just provided you. Using their answers, you and your students are able to calculate the probability of if they were to choose three people at random, how many students favorite ice cream would be strawberry, the probability someone being involved with jazz band, and the probability of students not being a fan of sports. By using Google Forms, you as the teacher are able to begin the lesson in a fun and engaging way that gives you the opportunity to learn more about your student, but as well as a chance for them to find similarities between themselves and among their peers.
Yet the lesson does not end at the form. Looking at the spreadsheet filled out with your students' answers, you are able to use that information to create graphs to reflect the statistics and the probability of the information. By being able to create charts within the spreadsheet that reflects the data collected, students are able to visualize the information they originally thought nothing of, and are able to manipulate it various way to not only understand the lesson in a hands-on manner but as well as to help students build community within the classroom, as they are able to find students with similar interests and hobbies.

I strongly believe that if you can't visualize math, it is almost impossible to fully understand it. Therefore, I am excited to play more with Google Forms and Google Sheets and integrate them into my unit and lessons to come, as they provide ways for students to see they're learning in action!

Playlist Reflecting My Belief of Technology in Education

Recently, I was assigned to create a playlist of songs reflecting my belief of the role of technology in teaching and learning. The songs I chose are as follows:

Everybody Talks by Neon Trees:
Tech and social media platforms give opportunity for people from all different walks of life to contribute to the global conversation revolving around education. This ability to contribute gives people the opportunity to share anything and everything they consider to be helpful, including tools, advice and resources for fellow educators, and educators specifically in their concentration area. Additionally, social media can act as a network for personal and professional development as an educator within the educational world.

Tape Deck by Jack Johnson:
Technology has multiple roles in the classroom, and because of the endless possibilities that tech in education poses, we as educators should be open to trying new things, being ready and willing to fail, being open to learning from our mistakes all the while holding excitement and optimistic of how we can best reach our students and appeal to their learning styles via the use of technology (i.e, determining what apps we can use to help students develop their understanding of a subject area).

Good People by Jack Johnson
Sometimes it's hard to recognize the role that technology can play in the mathematics classroom, and teachers can be hesitant to try new things or to incorporate new technologies into their practices. But, as tech becomes an integral part of the educational experience, it's important to overcome our fears and biases of technology in mathematics classrooms!

Here's the link to my playlist!

EDU 222 TyPoetry

Hey guys! 

In my EDU 222 Class, we had to compose a poem using Typography, one describing what we believe the role technology should play in teaching and learning, and then a second one describing an important concept from our concentration area (mine is math)! I hope you guys enjoy!

An important concept from my concentration area; It may not be in the curriculum, but understanding that math isn't a race is an important lesson that I think everyone should know! It took me years to understand that. I thought that if I didn't understand the material when it was first being taught, that I was stupid, but that is not the case! Everyone learns at their own speed, and some people may grasp concepts faster than other people do. You are your own person, and you will, with enough practice, eventually understand!

What I believe the role of technology has in teaching and learning; technology has so much to offer in terms of resources and new ways of explanation. Today, there are endless possibilities for what you can learn and what you can use to teach using technology. I am excited to see what the future holds for the education system!

Fall 2018 Practicum Class Norms:

Hey Guys!

Here's the list of Class Norms that my EDU 222 Class establish!