Skip to main content

 Hello! Welcome to Lessons Learned!

    I was invited to create this blog as part of a course for my masters in education. I love reading, cats, and Taylor Swift. I just as much enjoy hiking, fishing with my boyfriend, and going out with my lovely friends. This blog will be almost like my digital diary - I will reflect on lessons I've learned as a new teacher, lessons my colleagues have learned (both new and veteran), and lessons my students have learned. 

    My resolution for 2025- which I made about three weeks late- is to intentionally choose books that reflect a wide variety of identities. I plan to share my favorites and highlight how I used them in my instruction and how it impacted learning for my students. 

    To focus on my own well-being (and make more time for homework) I have taken a step away from social media. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or via email: missdeters@gmail.com.


Here's a snapshot of a week in my fifth grade classroom:

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Lessons Learned: Technology Inequity in Missouri

As an educator, I have always found it critical to reflect upon any sort of inequity taking place in school communities. This past week, I interviewed a teammate to learn about technological inequities in our school district. What I found really surprised me. I grew up in a more rural school district that already had Chromebooks one-to-one and spent my first year teaching in a more urban area, again, in a school district that already had Chromebooks one-to-one. I assumed since I am now teaching in a district that is both geographically and fiscally right in the middle, our district also had Chromebooks one-to-one across the board. I found out that only a small handful of the elementary schools in the district have these devices for every student. This made me wonder if we are sending a message to students that they are less deserving of the enriching, relevant learning experiences their peers have? The schools that do have one-to-one access worked hard to get to that point, and that ...

Cooperative Learning

       Yesterday, I completed a district-provided professional development on cooperative learning. Cooperative learning presents collaborative learning experiences for students and creates a higher rate of student participation. It can increase student understanding and achievement at a much higher rate than basic call-and-response lectures. I love the practice of getting students up and moving and changing the flow of a typical work day.       I am implementing cooperative learning strategies in my classroom by first creating a seating chart more focused on learning needs- this is something newer for me. I tend to focus on arrangements more on behavior, now I have added another piece to the puzzle and created a space that I hope will be more productive for every one of my students.      Once students are in their new seats, we will do some team building and bonding activities. I plan on asking them to create a team mascot and they...