My Work
This section provides examples of my work as a counselor/wellness coach, Humanities and Social Studies teacher, and Instructional Technologist working as a partner with students and teachers to facilitate learning. Common themes for these artifacts are discovery learning through inquiry and project-based learning guided by constructivist instructional and assessment strategies.
I call myself a life and wellness coach who works to help community members use the tools of Positive Psychology to enhance their well-being and thrive. My work as a counselor has focused on supporting the personal growth of students, staff members, teaching teams, and members of the greater community. This approach applies the Character Strengths and the PERMAH pillars of Positive Psychology. The following are resources that I created to support my school community.
- Behavior Intervention Plan - Drafted a new behavior support plan based on Character Strengths.
- Child Home Support Plan - Parents review the strategies of the Home Support Strategies to write up a home support plan for their child.
- Family Wellness Plan - Families use this template to design and implement their wellness plan.
- Home Support Strategies - Practices to help parents further build their parenting toolkit.
- How Is My PERMAH? - This worksheet supports self-reflection and understanding one's wellness.
- How Is the -- of My PERMAH Today & Tomorrow? - This series of workshops helps the user focus on one PERMAH pillar at a time. Here are the individual worksheets for each pillar> P - E - R - M - A - H
- My Strength Coaching Plan - I use this plan to help students exercise their strengths in new ways.
- My Wellness Profile - This chart guides students to describe how they apply specific Character Strengths within each of the PERMAH pillars.
- Parenting in the Digital Age & Family Digital Wellness - This workshop builds on values to design a digital wellness plan for the entire family.
- PERMAH Pivot Plan - PERMAH and the Character Strengths come together in this plan to help staff pivot to new jobs/countries.
- Personal Profile Organizer - All About Me Template - Students apply their active listening skills to interview a partner while helping each other reflect on their interests, skills, Character Strengths, and goals.
- Personal Wellness Plan In-Depth Version and Regular Version - These templates guide adults to design their plans for improved wellness. Look to edit the regular version for the developmental needs of students.
- Remote-Learner Wellness Support - This website supported our families who could not return to their host country. This version is a personal copy of the original school site.
- Strength-Based Intentions to Actions - This plan guides parents to bring more strength-based strategies into their parenting toolkits.
- Strength-Based Parenting Book Club - I ran a parent book club. I built this website to support club members and other interested parents to deepen their understanding of using Positive Psychology in their parenting.
- Student Profile - An information gathering form for parents to complete based upon Positive Psychology. This parent-created profile helps the counselor offer home strategies and for the teachers to further individualize their support of the student.
- Team Wellness Big Five Personality Inventory Presentation - I offered the idea of all staff taking the Big Five Aspect Inventory to understand what traits they bring to their teams. This idea connects to developing a teacher profile system (links to posts on my blog) to help teaching teams with their efficiency, productivity, and wellness. The All About Me Profile template was offered as a starting place to design the teacher profile cards.
- Unit Planning Template - This curriculum planning unit template based on Understanding by Design includes a section to document the wellness strategies to be integrated into the unit plan.
- Virtual School Wellness Tips for Students & Parents - One list of strategies is for students. The second one is for parents.
- Wellness@SSIS App - I partnered with a high school student to design and prototype a wellness app.
- Wellness@SSIS Blog - I authored this blog for the teaching community.
- Wellness and Virtual School Blog Posts - A series of posts in my blog starting in February 2020 on the topics of wellness and virtual school. The link takes you back to page 13. Scroll down to the start of the virtual school series entitled "Virtual Elementary - Looking Back to SARS in Hong Kong" and then scroll up on that page. You can then select "Newer" at the bottom of the page to move forward chronologically.
- Wellness@ES Resource Site - I created this website to share my understanding of Positive Psychology and how to integrate it into our classrooms.
- Wellness Staff PD - How Is Your PERMAH Today? What Are Your Wellness Goals? | Strength Spotting | Wellness Team Building with Character Strengths | Wellness with Character Strengths for Our TAs | Workspace Wellness
Personal Learning System (PLS)
Students (and teachers) who use technology to access information to learn, to create and communicate their learning develop a personalized set of resources for learning. This technology and information access toolkit is a Personal Learning System (PLS). The following are support resources to help students design and implement their PLS.
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WebQuests
I use WebQuests and Learning Pursuit online blended learning modules as the vehicle to structure the units of study for my classes. These learning journeys provide differentiated learning opportunities for student groups depending on each student's English ability and learning background. They are also open-ended, giving students the freedom to pursue personal learning questions. Do note that the resource section for most of these WebQuests does not include databases and other mainstream resources. I designed the WebQuests at international schools which did not have them.
AfricaQuest | ChinaQuest | China Learning Pursuit | ColonialQuest | ESPRAT+G
Geography Learning Pursuit | Germany Learning Pursuit | Global Awareness Technology Project | Greece & Rome | Healthy Living Pursuit | Learning About Germs (online book) | LearningQuest | Media Literacy Pursuit | MiddleEastQuest |MiddleAgesQuest | Native American Pursuit | ReconstructionQuest
Renaissance & Reformation | Research Pursuit | Revision Learning Pursuit
Rise of Dictators | US RegionsQuest | WWII Learning Pursuit
Curriculum writing with teaching partners is key to finding ways for the Information and Communication Literacies (ICL) curriculum to support all disciplines while helping students reach the technology and information standards.
At times our hopes for innovation through the curriculum collaboration process do not take root. Here is a blog post and podcast describing a science unit that the media specialist/GATE Coordinator, science coordinator, and myself diligently tried to guide into the minds of one grade-level team of teachers. I hope our approach to teaching human biology will take flight one day. :)
Collaboration for Learning
- Imagine This PYP Unit
- Collaboration and Curriculum PD Site
Teaching Critical Thinking & Research Skills
I mention the Information and Communication Literacies (ICL) approach to technology integration throughout this portfolio. Technology is one of several literacies, including information, media, visual, and design. Students use their ICL knowledge and skills to access, analyze, curate, create and communicate information. As an instructional technologist, I work with teachers to bring ICL learning into their classrooms to support the regular curriculum. As a Middle School Humanities teacher, my courses centered on applying ICL and the ESPRAT+G construct to the learning of social studies. We approached learning through inquiry and project-based instruction delivered through WebQuests. All our 8th-grade students prepared for exhibition evening at the end of the year when they presented their learning to an audience of students, faculty, and parents. One portion of Kevin's presentation (see photo) dealt with his learning and using critical thinking and research skills in the "Why Dictatorship?" WebQuest that I designed for the class. Please select the link below to view the ICL learning outcomes we developed at one school. You can also view the video of one portion of Kevin's presentation.
- ICL Learning Outcomes
- Kevin's Critical Thinking Exhibition
College Handbook
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Making Thinking Visible
Technology provides students with multiple pathways to be creative writers and communicate their understanding. Creating digital books and screencasts engages creativity, artistic, and speaking skills. Technology offers students adaptive ways to make their thinking visible, especially if they are young preliterate learners or struggle in general with their writing. Web tools can also help students to see their ideas as they create. The Thinking Routines section of my Web Resources for Learning site provides strategies for blended to virtual delivery of the routines. See the videos below for examples of student creativity while sharing their understanding.
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- Pre-K & K Field Trip Documentation
- Kindergarten Water Unit Assessment
- Grade 1 Book Creator Stories
- Grade 2 Storybird Project
Student Multimedia Assessments
When we create common assessments, we look for ways technology can support learning styles and empower student creativity. Working through the curriculum review process, I partner with teachers to increase opportunities for students to access, evaluate and process information while using various literacies to communicate their understanding. Check out the videos below for our Information and Communications Literacies (ICL) approach to supporting language arts, social studies, and science learning.
Celebration & Community Building
A great deal gets accomplished by students and teachers. It is important to celebrate our community whenever possible. Select the links below to see examples of video celebrations.
- International Week Celebration
- 5th Grade Graduation Video
- George Marshall High School Cross Country Team Regional Meet
- Kindergarten Presentation
- Little League Baseball
Videography in Learning
Video production is a powerful generative tool when placed in the hands of students. Student teams managing a video product use multiple intelligences, habits of mind, and language arts skills to share their learning and understanding. Watch the DragonNews morning shows produced by Grade 3 & 5 students. Select the links below to view each video.
Resources for Learning
Whether it is a resource or media-rich website to introduce terms, a video for math concepts, or a video to support a science unit, I create media and tutorial resources to support student learning. Select the links below to see resources created to support student learning.
- Shapes in the City for Math
- The Power of Sound for Science
- Guidelines for Grade 4 Art-Music-Language Screencast
Documenting Teaching and Learning
I work to document, share and celebrate instructional strategies and assessments that model our efforts to help students learn 21st-century skills. This effort to cross-pollinate ideas supports our learning community and leads to further innovations. See below a video documenting Mr. Lambert's project-based economics unit completed with an actual market where students sold their goods. Review many examples of project-based learning from the Alexandria Country Day School blog. Look to check out several videos from Washington International School.
- The Market at HKIS
- Innovative Practices at ACDS Blog (no longer published)
- Washington International School: ICL Integration | Making Thinking Visible | Number Talks | Using Online Databases