This is the weekend of transition for teachers who have semester-long courses. I said goodbye to my first semester students on Friday and will say hello to all new students on Monday. It was a great fall semester despite the hiccups from a new school schedule, teaching a brand new course, and the implementation of Google in our district. Overall, I have to say that I’m pleased and proud of what my students have accomplished:
- My Entrepreneurship students hit it out of the park with their business this semester! They sold Mansfield decals and were able to donate $700 to the Joe Andruzzi Foundation in memory of Samantha Bourque (a former student who lost her battle with cancer in 2012). Students also made two microloans to aspiring entrepreneurs in both Kyrgyzstan and Liberia through Kiva.org. Since the inception of this small business project, my students have donated over $7,000 and have made microloans to entrepreneurs in 14 different countries!
- My Personal Finance students took part in the W!SE Financial Literacy Certification exam thanks to generous sponsors who covered the cost of the exam administration. I’m happy to report that 15 of my students passed the exam and are now considered financially literate! This is a designation that they are able to put on their resumes.
- My Google Applications students were real troopers this semester. With the implementation of Google products district-wide and a brand new Google Applications course, they were the first to go test everything out. I appreciated their patience with me as I constantly asked them to give feedback on what we were doing. I’m sure they were all tired of hearing my say “We’re all learning together!”
- My students in the Senior Option – Online Courses program took an array of courses from Brigham Young University, the University of Missouri, and Fuel Education. Their courses ranged from AP Psychology to Medical Terminology to American Sign Language, and many in between. These 27 students are already ahead of the curve and have been working on their spring courses for several weeks now.
- I also worked with one of my students to bring BreakoutEDU to my students. We co-wrote a grant to get the materials for breakout boxes and he implemented our first breakout session! The students were challenged, engaged, and have a lot of fun with the BreakoutEDU kits. For more on that, read that blog post.
It was also a semester of many geeky shirts! I’ve gotten better about documenting my #GeekyShirtFriday efforts on Twitter. I put them all in an album below for your enjoyment!
Enough procrastinating, back to calculating final grades. Here’s to a fun and successful spring semester!
