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Cultivating New Approaches to Teaching and Learning
Cultivating New Approaches to Teaching and Learning
By Amanda Ritchie
The AIU launched its second iteration of the transformED Teacher Innovation Fellowship this past spring. The initiative serves as an incubator for new approaches to teaching and learning by bringing together teachers with a shared interest in advancing instructional innovation.
Fellows are each awarded a $1,500 mini-grant to purchase technology, maker materials and other resources to support innovative teaching approaches that they design and pilot within their own classrooms, with funding provided through the support of the Grable and Henry L. Hillman foundations. Collaborating peer-to-peer at in-person sessions, they share progress and talk through challenges throughout the fellowship.
This year’s class of fellows included two cohorts with a total of 36 K-12 teachers from across the region, including a cohort of special education teachers who were recruited in partnership with the AIU’s Training and Consultation team, which provides professional development for educators who serve students with special needs.
Tyler Samstag, the AIU’s director of Instructional Innovation and program director for transformED, initiated the formation of that cohort as a proactive measure to increase participation among special education teachers.
“Special education teachers are rarely the first selected to attend innovation-focused professional development. And yet, special education at its core embodies innovation—leveraging cutting-edge technologies and emerging research in the brain sciences," Samstag said. "For that reason, transformED designs trainings that intentionally highlight the intersection of special education and innovation."
The fellows assembled at the AIU in May to share how they integrated instructional innovation into their classrooms at the first-ever transformED Teacher Innovation Fellowship Showcase.
Each teacher shared their insights on how they implemented creative, future-ready learning opportunities for their students over the course of the fellowship.
Read on to learn about two projects from the special education cohort.
Hampton Custom Creations
“It’s not often that special education teachers get the collaboration and support from enrichment facilitators,” said Elizabeth Barnes, standing alongside Hampton High School enrichment facilitator Melissa Survinski, Ph.D., at their transformED Fellowship Showcase table. Barnes, who teaches special education at Hampton High School, teamed up with Dr. Survinski to reimagine the School Jobs class for special education students.
“We all worked together,” Barnes said. “It’s something that we wanted to do because it’s what we believe about education for kids. I think that’s a really powerful statement about collaboration and partnerships – and enriching all of our students – not just the top performers.”
Through the fellowship, they became more future-focused. “We saw the future of e-commerce and its potential for students with special needs to work as business owners,” Barnes said.
They wanted to provide their students with post-secondary employment skills while empowering them to gain valuable skills, run a small business and create personalized products. And thus Hampton Custom Creations was born, providing students in the jobs class opportunities to design and create personalized products.
“Traditionally, special education students are more geared toward a more hourly career path in terms of the production side of things,” Barnes said. “But we wanted to inspire them to be the makers, the business owners and the creators of their small business.”
At first, they experimented with different items to see what students gravitated towards and found joy in making. They settled on mugs and a line of school spirit apparel. The class even partnered with the district to make 400 mugs as tokens of appreciation for teachers and staff.
By focusing on the strengths of each student, “we found a way for every kid regardless of their ability to find something about the process that they could do with the skills that they have,” Dr. Survinski said. For example, one particularly meticulous student loves to use the mug press, while another with strong organizational skills became the shop manager, she explained.
“Now they’re seeing every teacher in the building holding a mug that they individually made, which is really awesome,” Dr. Survinski said. “Making things that people like and enjoy has made kids excited about learning and coming to school and participating,” Barnes said.
It doesn’t get much better than that.
The Impact of Flexible Seating on Social-Emotional Learning
Julie Kerlicker is an elementary special education teacher in the Baldwin-Whitehall School District. Going into the fellowship, she set out to create a flexible physical environment to empower student choice, self-advocacy and collaboration with peers. She wanted her classroom to include alternative seating as well as sensory items aimed to benefit students with autism.
“Right now, I teach special education and I teach autistic support, learning support and emotional support – just like a blend of everything, Kerlicker said. “They just have so many different needs.”
“In the future, my students will have a choice in their career,” she said.
“They will likely not have to sit still at one desk for the duration of the day. The flexible physical space concept will encourage decision-making skills, enhance communication skills and encourage emotional regulation, all of which are essential components for future success!”
Their collective selections for their enhanced environment included a beanbag chair, yoga balls, canopy, and a Nugget Couch, a modular couch with foam pieces that can be arranged into various play structures. As the pieces began to arrive, students helped design the arrangement of their learning space. It wasn’t long before Kerlicker saw a huge decrease in behavioral issues, not to mention significant academic growth.
“If you look at our MAP testing scores, 98 percent of my kids made growth,” Kerlicker said. “We just took them in the spring and their scores are just significantly higher. And four out of my eight math students broke out of that red band. That’s awesome!”
“There’s a stigma in special education,” Kerlicker said. “Especially when you get to this age, they don’t want to need extra help. But they love [spending time here] now.”
Read more from this issue: Fall 2023
