Teaching Responsibilities
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"In addition to her main job as an English teacher at our school, she was our yearbook advisor, managed the school's website, and ran our creative writing club."
- Ms. Kristen Maher Former coworker, BCHS Master English Teacher "Ms. Waite is one of the best Web Content Managers we have had. It has certainly been my pleasure to work with her." - Ms. Nicole Gulley Former colleague, DPSCD Office of Communications and Marketing |
As of 2023, I teach at Warren Mott High School (where my mother, sister, step brothers, and I graduated from!) I love working with the students in my community and connecting them to their community's resources.
Previously, I taught for eight years at Benjamin Carson High School of Science and Medicine (renamed Crockett Midtown High School of Science and Medicine since I left). Here, despite being a school that had programming focused on the medical field, I was able to bring creative, real-world lessons to my classes that were based in reading and writing. Prior to teaching at BCHS, I had five field placements during my bachelor's degree, including my student teaching experience. Click on the name of each school below to find some of my responsibilities during my time there. August 2023 - present I teach English (Language Arts) to 10th grade students, and EL Lit to English Language Learning students. My Responsibilities (as full time teacher): - Partner with the Warren Public Library on two project-based learning units where student writing is produced and published in a book available for check-out at the library, and students use voice and persuasion to develop marketing materials for library teen programs - Facilitate language learning for ELL students through the use of pen pals in Detroit, think-pair-share activities, and a variety of other best practices - Collaborate with district professionals on researching best practices and using this research to plan new curriculum for the district’s high school English classes September 2014 - August 2022 I taught English (Language Arts) to 9th, 10th, and 12th grade students, yearbook, and creative writing. My Responsibilities (as full time teacher): - Created engaging, authentic units and lessons through the use of backward design and essential questions - Led the ESL department, providing weekly plans and specific instructions to target personal growth for English Language Learner students, resulting in each student demonstrating growth on the PSAT - Engaged with the community through public appearances on three local news stations to emphasize positive projects from the school - Collaborated with the tenth grade teaching team to implement a cross-curricular project based learning unit, working with the Healthy Teens Care Community Center as our client - Worked with community members to supplement engaging units - Tracked student data (based on standards) and apply this data to the classroom teaching strategies - Differentiated instruction and offered student choice - Scaffolded lessons (for example: annotation strategies to help reading comprehension) - Modeled expected approaches through gradual release techniques - Advised weekly Creative Writing Club meetings - Communicated student behavior to parents to improve success among students - Aided in creating the school's School Improvement Plan - Wrote six district curriculum guides aligned with standards and best teaching practices for classroom use by teachers - Collaborated with colleagues on district’s African American Literature curriculum - Trained three pre-student teachers as they integrate into the classroom setting, working hands on and building relationships with students August 2013 - April 2014 During my yearlong internship at this school, I transitioned from being an observer, to a co-teacher, to a full time teacher of six ninth grade English classes. My Responsibilities: - Built relationships with students to help motivate them - Maintained complete and accurate paper records of each student’s growth using both school wide and classroom based formative and summative assessments - Planned, documented, and carried out daily lessons that aligned to common core standards - Wrote lesson plans with clearly stated objectives that had measurable outcomes - Included use of available materials and technology in lesson plans - Maintained an organized an inviting physical environment - Maintained positive relationships with parents through the communication with e-mail - Facilitated parent-teacher conferences, providing parents with updated progress reports - Attended, participated in, and contributed to in-service activities and staff meetings - Collaborated with colleagues to share experience and knowledge - Observed many classrooms of colleagues, when possible - Welcomed observations by, and feedback from, colleagues and other professionals in education - Sought out and attended workshops, seminars, and courses relating to professional growth goals - Used personal experiences to provide real-world examples in teaching - Reflected on own teaching - Remained flexible and adjusted lessons when necessary - Conducted one-on-one conversations with students - Provided tutoring to students before and after school May 2013 - June 2013 I spent close to two months at Avondale as an observer and partial co-teacher. This field placement was for my summer class. At this school I observed a ninth grade English class, a Yearbook class, and an ESL class. My Responsibilities (as co-teacher): - Aided students in graphic design through their Yearbook class - Reviewed Oakland County's Common Core Curriculum - Provide a session six lesson on the four freedoms to the English class - Provide an introductory lesson (using the idea of the death penalty) to the ESL class January 2013 - April 2013 This field placement allowed me to co-teach a class of ESL students. It also allowed me to expand my understanding and knowledge of the field by providing me with opportunities to interact with education outside of the classroom too. My Responsibilities (as co-teacher): - Interacted with students on a smaller classroom size scale - Provided lessons that could cater to students of various language levels - Familiarized myself with updated WIDA standards by attending an Oakland County Schools’ Title III meeting in which I worked with colleagues to develop a unit using the new standards - Supervised a group of seven middle and high school students on a service project based field trip to a Detroit elementary school where they donated books and read to other ESL students - Monitored the facilitation of the listening and speaking portion of ELPA testing - Observed home-based learning techniques including a focus on reading comprehension July 2012 This field placement was a month long internship with class running Monday through Friday from 8:30 to 12:00. Although I was a co-teacher with another teacher, we were both interns and this was completely our class (with no assigned cooperating teacher). The class was a sixth grade class of English Language Learners who were all at very different levels (from beginner, to intermediate, to proficient). My Responsibilities (as co-teacher): - Applied appropriate self–developed assessment techniques to the students in order to differentiate their learning levels and provide them with an accurate education - Encouraged a positive and appropriate learning environment by dividing the students into learning-level groups - Created and ran lessons with my colleague in order to best suit our students' variety of needs - Interacted with students in order to build relationships so they felt comfortable in the learning environment - Maintained complete and accurate paper records of each student’s growth - Included use of technology and materials in lessons - Used personal experiences to provide real-world examples in teaching - Reflected on own teaching - Conducted one-on-one conversations with students September 2010 - April 2011 This field placement was once a week for three hours each week; I observed one speech class and one English twelve class. In English twelve, I was able to start teaching after the second week and then once my semester was done (allowing me to finish my field placement) I was invited to remain the rest of the year in the class, which I did. I continued teaching weekly lessons to the students, incorporating best practices into the school's curriculum. While I was not a full time teacher, the days that I was in the class and was teaching meant that it was all me and I was not co-teaching. My Responsibilities (as teacher): - Directed lesson plans that involved best practices - Reviewed fundamental topics such as: literary devices, point of view, themes, and grammar - Integrated technology into the classroom by producing a Web Quest to follow the curriculum’s novel, Nickel and Dimed, that the class was studying - Created assessments to understand students' individual thinking and evaluated them - Reflected on own teaching - Remained flexible and adjusted lessons when necessary |