Kayla VanEgmond's Showcase
Creativity in Leading and Learning
Welcome to my showcase of amazing lessons and learnings I have enjoyed as I become a better teacher and leader. This page focuses on, and celebrates, creativity in leading, as well as creativity in learning. My ideas of what being a leader in my school means has matured during my past few years of teacher learning. As my knowledge and my philosophy have grown, I have collected a lot of work that portrays my learning throughout the past few years. Below you can read about some of my understandings of what it means to be a leader in both my school and my classroom, which is highlighted in the first section, Creativity in Leading. In the second section, Creativity in Learning, I have highlighted lessons and activities that I have created to demonstrate my application of creativity to the classroom . Thank you for viewing my showcase!
*Note to professors: My computer crashed so I do not have all of my papers and assignments - I have summarized them instead.
Creativity In Leading
Budgets and Building BlocksAs a leader you need to be in charge of many things, including a budget or plan. I created an action plan/budget that allowed me to identify a leadership issue in my middle school and determine what staff developments, instructional programs, books, and other materials would be helpful in fixing or altering that school issue - all within the budget of course. A separate paper included an action plan to fit an elementary issue to improve new teacher integration through an individualized mentorship program: Leadership and Organization Analysis. This analysis really helped me realize what goes into and can go into teacher learning. There are so many FREE resources out there to use, so it does not always have to be expensive to be effective as long as it is well planned. |
Teach Me How to StudyWhile interning in Chicago, I worked with three other amazing women also completing a full year internship through Michigan State University. We welcomed the role of helping create and contribute to the pep assembly to get students excited for the Illinois Standard Achievement Test (ISAT). We created and performed a song written to the tune of Teach Me How to Dougie giving students a song that they know with a performance to remember. This experience showed me the value of vulnerability and how to have fun while being a leader, and at the same time hopefully inspiring other teacher leaders to step up for their students' enjoyment.
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The Racial Achievement GapAs part of my journey to both become a teacher and become a better teacher leader I have focused many of my classes and much of my time and heart, including all of my internships, placements, and teaching positions, on urban education. The essence of the paper I worked on captures a grand understanding of issues with education, society, and politics that encourages and effects the racial achievement gap. The paper also includes strategies, albeit ones that all of society must contribute to, to change the issues in our educational system.
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Creativity in Learning
African FolktalesThe lesson plan below showcases a great example of what a teacher goes through while creating lesson plans for her students. This unit starts with a unit overview, including background knowledge, the unit's big ideas, and a parent letter. Next the unit lists all the materials, books, and resources required in the unit. The unit then has an overview of all the lessons and assessments to the day, explaining what we will be doing and why - a great way to keep teachers and students on track. There are also a few more detailed lesson plans and mini-lesson explanations. Finally, the unit ends with a post-teaching reflection, requiring me me to think about changes I would have made in the lessons and what went well throughout the unit.
A view of my lesson plan: How can you use folktales to compare African cultures and explore your own culture? |
Science and Social Studies Through SportsOne of the themes during my studies of creativity in learning was on using sports to teach science and social studies. I created lesson plans intertwining science and sports or social studies and sports to create meaningful, fun, creative, and engaging lesson plans that will allow students to learn while utilizing the seven creativity tools portrayed in this video. One example can be seen below: Take Me Out to the Ball game. Seven of the creativity tools - Perceiving, Patterning, Abstracting, Embodied Thinking, Modeling, and Playing, have lessons that allow students to learn through experiments or play, making learning creative.
Other examples can me seen at this website: Creativity in Teaching and Learning. |
Take Me Out to the BallgameOne of the themes during my studies of creativity in learning was on using sports to teach science and social studies. This link (Abstracting) will go to a webpage that portrays a complete version of how I took the song Take Me Out to the Ballgame and rewrote it to teach about how baseball has changed throughout the years, making the verses of the song change along with it, specifically relating each version to changes in the history of Michigan.
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Science: What changes Earth's Surface?In this YouTube Video you see an amazing class of 5th grade scholars discussing different ways Earth's surface changes. This is one video clip from a series of four that I used to analyze my teaching, question asking style, classroom management, and student engagement. Through these video taping sessions I honed my ability to assess my teaching and review what my students already know, want to know, or need to review for the unit based on this pre-assessment conversation about science and what can change the surface of our Earth.
A view of the Instructional Sequence of my science unit: How does the Earth's Surface Change Over Time? |
Social Studies: A Great Debate in the News
In this unit I have combined Social Studies and Language Arts, like I have in other units. This part of my showcase demonstrates my work through creating lesson plans that intertwine the two subjects. This unit and the two artifacts above show how I present student work and give students the opportunity to showcase their own learning to build self-confidence, ownership, and a love for learning. The unit below illustrates my own desire to learn and adjust my teaching to make it more meaningful and beneficial for my students. By making engaging and relatable lessons and units, I am building my students up for success.
A view of my lesson plan: Descriptive news articles and “What Really Happened in History?”
A view of my lesson plan: Descriptive news articles and “What Really Happened in History?”
To achieve greatness, start where you are,
use what you have, and do what you can."
-Arthur Ashe