Mr K Social Studies

15 Years Classroom Teaching Experience (5th, 6th, 8th Grades, 9-12) including courses in World History & World Cultures, US History I & II, AP Human Geography, and Journalism.

My philosophy of education has been forged through personal and professional experiences and through extensive reflection. As a student, and even undergraduate, my experience in education was largely passive. My instructors would lecture, I would take notes, study, take a multiple choice test, and often forget the content. When I first started my professional career, this was also my default setting. Since that time, however, I have fully embraced a holistic instructional approach oriented around student-centered learning. Not only have I found this much more engaging and enriching from an instructional standpoint, but this approach has allowed students to fully engage in relevant content and skills with such insight and depth, that I could have not simply led them to through direct instruction alone. In order to produce this outcome, my approach begins with three prongs; strong content knowledge, development of personal relationships, and engaging coursework. While I have often discussed which of these is the chicken, and which are the eggs with friends and colleagues, essentially, they all must be present simultaneously since each student is different and requires buy-in in a different manner. By employing all three, I can eventually demonstrate to students that I will support their growth through (attainable) challenges, and can justify how and why what they are doing matters both globally and individually. To accomplish this, I have embraced UbD concepts in unit design, identifying essential outcomes (and thus essential questions) to reverse engineers lessons and assessments. I then take a Universal Design approach to provide differentiated materials (whether it be some combination of technology integration, leveled texts, collaborative work, and so forth) to engage the students in a developmentally appropriate way. Moreover, I am cognizant of not only the required NJCSS Standards, but actively incorporate NJSL Standards through performance based-assessments so the students can demonstrate both content and skill mastery. Thus, by identifying the three inputs of rigor, relevance, and relationship-building, I am able to generate outputs of content and skill mastery, as well as less quantifiable skills like “grit.” Ultimately, through this process, I am able to be both a coach and cheerleader, providing challenge and support to students in a safe environment that encourages intellectual expression and experimentation.

Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society, Mortar Board National Honor Society, Academic Semester Honors, Notation in Creative Writing, Presenter at Phi Alpha Theta Regional Conference (2006), ETS Recognition of Excellence, Gilder Lehrman Summer Fellow (2011), East Asia Institute at Princeton University Fellow (2011-2012)

BAs in History and Secondary Social Studies Education, MAs in Liberal Studies and Educational Leadership

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