STEAD Project

Hey there Mary Vale here submitting my project for consideration

for the said school.

Um I'm going to start off just with a good

old dad joke because that's kind of who I am

and that is why why can't your nose the 12

long? Well, because then it would be a foot.

Yeah. Um so little about me just kind of jump

right in.

I'm a good old Nebraska native, pretty hardcore husker fan,

even though we're not the greatest team the last several

years. Um move down here a couple of years ago.

Um I come from a relatively big family.

Um we love adventuring together, I think treasure hunting is

kind of in our roots.

This is actually a picture of us out in um

like Salida area trying to find gems and rocks and

uh we found nothing, but that's kind of my family

and you're real close knit.

Um and I have a couple of nieces and nephews

now and so it's fun venturing together.

So that's kind of the roots of me, things that

I enjoy doing.

Um I love running, I like competing in races when

we can compete in races, I'm not excellent, but I

always just set out to do um something um So

all of that um I also attempt to golf again,

not a great golfer, but it's always fun just to

get out and try to do it.

Um And then ever since moving here in colorado I

have found it super awesome to go out and enjoy

hiking and exploring all the really cool areas that exist

out here.

Um I feel like there's just endless possibilities.

I have also recently dabbled into snowboarding.

I've only been doing it for a couple of years

now and starting at the age of like 36 is

pretty comical, but again, I just love enjoy being outside

and the endure being outdoors just to the outdoors, right?

I love exploring and finding new things to do and

new things to see.

Um I am a lifelong learner um it's actually pretty

funny like I can't help myself keep enrolling in courses

and classes and continuing to grow as a person and

as a professional um I feel like um student debt

is never going to get paid off for me because

of that.

But I also find just a lot of value in

learning new things, especially in education, things are always changing,

there's new things coming out and if you're not saying

up to date on that stuff and I feel like

you're kind of falling behind.

So I am a definite lifelong learner.

Over the last few years I have been teaching online,

I will blended learning two years ago and then this

year has been straight remote because of covid But during

that time I have been able to dive into a

lot of online resources in ways of teaching um online

basically with so many people moving to remote.

There's been so many companies that have come up with

awesome resources to use with our students and so that's

been a lot of my professional development over the last

year is different ways to use technology.

Um different programs that are available ways to incorporate that

um into our classroom.

And then also I have dived into quite a bit

of a project based learning.

I came from Nebraska a couple years ago and in

Nebraska, they called it service learning.

Um and I've been able to do a couple of

really cool projects, but I feel like in the traditional

setting it has been a little difficult to try to

do a project based learning just because of all the

standardized testing and that sort of stuff.

Um, I firmly believe in moving away from those things.

However, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do,

you know, for the job that you're hired for.

But a few years ago I was able to have

my students create rain barrels for this urban um, farm

and that was really neat and I'll actually go into

that here in a little bit about something else.

I was working on last summer out here in Denver

as well.

Um, so yeah, so that's kind of me as a

learner, but as an educator, I'm going to go ahead

and we're going to go back in a time machine

to the year 1996 where this super awkward teenager had

no interest in school.

Um, I actually didn't dive into caring about school until

I had an educator were to actually that really cared

about who I was as a person as opposed to,

you know, my grades and that sort of stuff coming

from a family of four, I was third in line

and my older siblings sort of, you know, they didn't

care about school that much either.

And so I felt like I was labeled with that

sigma. Um, and so when I finally had some teachers

who remove that stigma, I really finally dove into education

my own education.

I, when I became a teacher was actually a second

career for me.

I was an accountant for a while and then I

switched and went back to school to become a teacher.

So this is the second career for me and I

did that because I wanted to make sure that I

became that educator that was there for me when I

needed them.

And I do believe the middle school and high school

age is when kids are just so impressionable and that's

when you can really make an impact on those students.

And so that's how I got into education and me

as an educator.

Well, I am a very fun, very outgoing, very goofy

teacher. This is actually me dressed up as a sharp

teaching just one day again.

This is in person.

But just because I love to have fun with the

kids and keep things interesting and I don't know, I

just, I like to keep things mixed up a little

bit. Um, that's kind of my philosophy with educating and

I'll talk a little bit more about my philosophy here

in a second as well.

Um, last thing I wanna make sure to talk about

as an educator is being involved with the community.

Um, this is actually a picture just this last october

of me with my sister and I recruited her to

help me raise money for the Grand Lake victims from

the fire that occurred up there.

I was able to raise about $6000 and then went

to Costco and bought a bunch of stuff that they

needed up there.

They needed clothes, they needed food, um, sanitation type kits,

all that stuff.

And so I got a little U haul trailer, loaded

it up as much as I could and then drove

up to Grand Lake and I was able to volunteer

a couple of days up there to, to help with

the victims.

But the purpose of that was again, to just stay

involved in the community.

Um, is not just education in school, but being involved

outside of the classroom as well as a big part

of who I am as an educator.

Um My teaching philosophy, this is where I kind of

want to dive in quickly into my beliefs um for

education and the main base, foundation for my teaching philosophy

is building relationships.

Um if you don't have relationships with the students, then

there is nothing else that you can really work with

from there.

I feel like if the students don't think you care,

then they're not going to care.

And so my biggest piece of much teaching philosophy is

building those relationships, building that trust with students and making

sure that they have a comfort with you as an

educator or teacher or a facilitator or a guide, whatever

the role is at the time to make sure that

that trust and that relationship is there.

Um I also firmly believe in students creating their own

learning. I think that if they can create um sorry

about that, create meaning um on their own, then that

is where um education really starts to come to fruition.

So, for example, last summer I was, I took a

PBL certification course and the project we were working on

was working with Urban Farm here in Denver.

And the plan, which unfortunately didn't get to happen yet

was Covid was to have students kind of dive into

this urban farm community and see what needs there needed

to be and build off of those needs.

Again, the point was to create their own learning.

They wanted to find a problem, come up with a

solution and then we would fill in the areas where

they needed to know what to do.

Um in this case it was, I think the needs

were to build a fence and then also to get

like a public service announcement out to the community about

who the urban farm was.

So kind of a bunch of different ways to work

with that organization.

So going back to the teaching philosophy again, making it

meaningful. I think if you can't explain where these things

live in the real world with students, then it's hard

for them to um, I guess buy into what it

is that you're trying to educate them on again, if

you might get meaningful for them and where does it

lie in their lives?

It's much more powerful.

Um, I also believe in novelty as you can see

with my dressing up for class.

I love having fun with the kids.

I don't want education to be a formal, sitting in

a classroom type environment where I'm just talking at the

kids. Um, I believe in fun little activities.

Um, I even typically did magic tricks for the kids.

Um, kept things interesting.

We always try to do fun things with other classes.

Um, just that novelty piece and almost more of a

team building type structure without content involved.

I think that is a big part of teaching.

Our youth today is team building without content and creating

those relationships again with the students.

Um, I would like to thank you so much for

listening to my video and I look forward to hopefully

meeting with you soon.

Um, uh, take care.

STEAD Project

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