Teaching Overview for Mid-Tenure

Teaching Overview:

            Over the past two and a half years, I have taught a total of fourteen course sections with an equal split of undergraduate courses and graduate courses. Of those fourteen courses, only four were taught more than once, leaving a total of ten course preparations. I have invested a great deal of time and effort into learning course content, reflecting on my teaching, and making adjustments to course syllabi to more appropriately meet the contextual and differentiated needs of my students. In addition to these courses that I taught, I also developed two new courses, one graduate Masters level course on teaching and learning with technology and one undergraduate course on classroom management (described in more detail on page 7a). I currently serve on two doctoral dissertation committees, one of which I co-chair, and I am the faculty advisor for one Honors student.

            The elementary program is the largest undergraduate program in the department, serving over 350 undergraduate students. Our graduate programs serve almost thirty students. The size of the elementary program poses challenges in program coherence, which is imperative to ensure the education of high quality novice teachers. To support program coherence, the elementary faculty uses a structure called course leads. The duties for course lead vary among individuals but for me, this meant meeting with all instructors regularly throughout the semester to plan lessons, discussing issues and concerns, and supporting their teaching. Each meeting lasted from two –four hours, depending on the course. I served as the course lead for all four courses in the Teacher Leadership Certificate, all sections taught of EDE 4504 Classroom Management (the undergraduate course I developed), and the field experiences for the Urban Teacher Residency Partnership Program (UTRPP), (explained in further detail on page 6). The size of the elementary program also warrants intense collaboration. I have collaborated not only with elementary faculty but also with faculty from other programs and departments who teach in the elementary program. I have also collaborated with Hillsborough County Public School (HCPS) administrators, principals, and teachers. This collaboration is evident in many ways one of which is through my collaborative teaching publication and another of which is the collaboration on training grants. I have been a part of two training grants (one for $2500 and one for $18,000) and I have been the lead for an initiative with HCPS for $67,600.