Joyce Y.⼁Our Tailored Approach to English/Language Arts
Our 1:1 approach to education means that every lesson is designed to foster student curiosity and academic growth. As an expert English teacher, Joyce recounts how she tailors lessons to incorporate high-interest texts, transferable research skills, and presentations into her course curriculum.
As a Pac Prep teacher it is both a joy and an adventure to tailor my one on one classes for my students.
During Fall Semester 2022, my 8th grade English student Alex* read the memoir Hurricane: My Story of Resilience by Salvador Gomez-Colon. Salvador recounts his experience, at age 15, of enduring Hurricane Maria and its aftermath with his family in Puerto Rico. After experiencing the Category 4 hurricane and viewing the damage and the hardships that people in Puerto Rico face, Salvador decides to raise funding and establish a charity which he names Hope and Light in order to purchase solar lamps with phone chargers and hand powered washing machines for those with limited resources who had been hit particularly hard by the storm. Through reading Salvador’s story and doing additional research, Alex found out that many people lacked power and access to clean water for close to one year.
As Alex continued to read Hurricane, discuss, write, and think about the book and the conditions in Puerto Rico post Hurricane Maria, his interest in Salvador’s work to help others grew. He learned that some school buildings had been destroyed, and older residents had needed power due to their health but didn’t have access to it because of the storm’s damage. He also learned that students and teachers at Salvador’s school came to school early so they could take showers, and many people couldn’t wash their clothes because they didn’t have electricity or access to clean water after the storm. I know Alex to be a thoughtful and compassionate person who naturally wants the best for others. So, I began to develop a research project that he could undertake through which he could find out about solutions to the problems caused by Hurricane Maria. I also remembered hearing about earthquakes in Puerto Rico that I imagined must have added to the damage that Maria had created. And while we were reading Salvador’s memoir, Hurricane, Hurricane Fiona touched down on the island almost 5 years to the day that Maria had done the same. Alex was interested in finding out more about rebuilding in Puerto Rico and the conditions under which people were currently living. He decided to name his research project and culminating presentation “Puerto Rico Rebuilding.”
Alex used his critical thinking skills to create searches after learning how to “Google Like a Pro” from a lesson based on an infographic from the News Literacy Project. Alex found articles from The New York Times, Newsela, FEMA reports, and video from CBS News. He used the 5 W's of journalism to summarize each source and decide on the specific information he needed for his project and presentation. He then chose a design for his slides, graphic images, and a photo from The New York Times of residents rowing down a street in floodwaters from Hurricane Fiona. He learned and applied paraphrasing techniques to add text to his presentation. And finally, Alex presented his project in class. I created a collage of audience members, which I taped to the portable green screen behind me. Salvador Gomez-Colon was part of Alex’s audience. Alex did a fantastic job of providing evidence for his claim, which was: “Puerto Rico has gone through many ups and downs during the rebuilding phase after natural disasters like Hurricane Maria on September 16, 2017, huge earthquakes starting on January 7, 2020, with multiple aftershocks, and Hurricane Fiona on September 18, 2022.”
*Student’s name has been anonymized.
A note from our Faculty Manager: This research project highlights what makes Joyce the perfect teacher for our 1:1 model. Joyce is able to capitalize on a high interest topic selected by her student, weave in the analysis of primary and secondary sources, and draw connections between the topic at hand and the realities faced by those within the US and abroad. One of Joyce’s greatest strengths is her authentic connections to students and her thoughtful lesson planning. She expertly integrates topics her students are passionate about into the course content standards, facilitating a personalized learning experience where students meet and exceed learning targets. Her thoughtful feedback and guidance along the way provides an environment where the teacher serves as a guide and the student drives their own learning and academic growth.