Igniting Your Personal and Professional Growth

Describe one or two, specific learning experiences from your fellowship. In words, show us this experience and explain why it was powerful.

Having the opportunity to tour real castles and to actually spend the night in the castle that inspired the Rapunzel fairy tale was so impactful to me as a storyteller and an educator. I cannot wait to share the real life photos and videos from my experience with my students to motivate their writing and interest in creative storytelling.

What did you learn about yourself? What did you learn professionally?

To travel in a "post" pandemic world takes a level of courage that I was not sure I possessed. This grant experience built my confidence as a risk taker and has provided the opportunity for me to encourage my colleagues to pursue their own professional learning opportunities. This year I was named Madison City Schools District Elementary Teacher of the Year for 2022-23. I am confident that this honor was related to sharing my global education experience.

What were some unplanned or unexpected experiences or outcomes of your fellowship? Or, how did the fellowship you crafted differ from the actual learning experience?

Woke up and our hotel host , Michael, said there is a special live performance of the Pied Piper play at noon and we should stick around. So we stuck around and I could not stop smiling! We made sure to “pay the piper”(make a donation) on the way out. Another unexpected experience was locating the final resting place of the Brothers Grimm in Berlin Germany. The cemetery was difficult to locate and just as I was giving up a stranger pointed the way and we found the most beautiful and macabre.

Impacting Your Classroom, School and Community

Outline specific plans you have to implement your fellowship and reach your student goals.

I am creating a genre unit focused on fairy tales for our third grade students. This unit, over a 4 week period, will help third grade students explore and improve their reading, writing, speaking ,listening and collaboration skills. Based on third grade ELA and science standards , students will be able to describe literary elements within a story (fairy tale), including setting, plot, characters, and themes.

What is one way you can leverage your fellowship to create one authentic learning experience for students? (e.g. hands-on learning, projects, community engagement)

Students will also develop writing skills by writing their own fractured fairy tales inspired by the real life photos taken during my fellowship. Finally, students will develop as "hands on", collaborative learners by researching castles and physically recreating them using 3-dimensional shapes and digitally recreating them using 3-dimensional shapes and digitally recreating them using Google drawings. (extension)

How, specifically, will your fellowship extend beyond your classroom? (e.g. families, school-at-large, afterschool groups, surrounding community, colleagues, etc.)

Developing this unit will empower our teachers to seek new and interesting ways to transform personal learning experiences into authentic learning for students. After the unit has been taught and modifications made, I will share with educators outside of my school through a website that I have already developed for global education called letsglobal.weebly.com and through other online platforms. I will share the Unit with my colleagues through an ELA/STEAM workshop PLC.