My school serves students from urban areas. 36% of our students come from low-income areas and nearly half of our students receive free and reduced-price lunch. Our school has a large minority population and we house one of our county's programs for English Language Learners, with many students from Mexico, Japan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. We also have an active LGBTQ population who organize a Gay-Straight Alliance and collaborate with GLSEN.
Additionally, we house magnet programs for Creative and Performing Arts and Engineering.
Thus, our student body is very diverse. Out of the 6 public high schools in our county, our school has a reputation for having a friendly student body and teachers who embrace diversity.
My Project
At-home learning has created a new paradigm when it comes to pencil and paper versus digital teaching and learning. As we were all suddenly thrown into virtual classrooms, I certainly felt trepidation at the idea of using unfamiliar technology and it took time to adjust to sitting in front of a camera and delivering my lessons to a screen full of mysterious black boxes with students sitting behind them, embarrassed or unwilling to show their faces.
Switch to the current day and I am enthused about the new digital trend in teaching.
I embrace the concept of a paperless classroom and I am proud of myself and my students for completely transforming the way our classroom runs. What started out as a worst-case scenario has sparked my creativity and I have found countless resources to facilitate digital learning, both in and outside of the classroom.
The difficulty of going paperless is that some students aren't transitioning well from pencil and paper to 100% digital. When I assign a writing activity or provide a digital document to fill in, they have to create text boxes and type their answers. Some students struggle with this unfamiliar task and beg for a paper copy they can write on. This poses a dilemma. The learning platform we use organizes all of the work we do into a digital "portfolio," kind of like a virtual binder, and I create multimedia assignments that can't be reproduced on paper. My remedy to this problem is to have several classroom iPads and Apple pencils so that these students can "write" their work while still keeping it in their digital binder. Thanks to the generosity of donors, I've already procured one iPad and I'm hoping to purchase at least two more for my classroom.
More than half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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