Leveling Up: A Teacher’s Journey

By Isis Lopez, Fourth-Grade Teacher & DEI Ambassador

Have you ever wondered what a teacher does during their summer break? You might think we are traveling, relaxing, or visiting loved ones. This in part is all accurate, but would you believe me if I told you some of us like to use this time to grow as learners and prepare for the new school year? Yes, it’s quite true: As soon as the school year ends, we hit the ground running and start planning for the next one.

To begin, in order for teachers to have a successful and smooth transition from summer break to a new year, we need the right approach and proper planning. At Alexander Dawson, we are fortunate to have an administrative team that provides teachers ample opportunities and resources to Level Up our educational journey, thanks to the many who donate toward Dawson’s faculty professional development designation as part of our Annual Fund. In alignment with our Core Beliefs, Dawson is a true learning community that invests in educational best practices, advances in technology, and relevant world development, and we are grateful to our community donors who continue to aid the professional needs of the dedicated educators who nurture, challenge, engage, and inspire our incredible students.

Annual Fund donations help support Dawson’s commitment to modern learning, and the School’s application of a Project-Based Learning (PBL) curriculum is one facet of modern learning that prepares students for a limitless world. PBL teaches academic knowledge and skills and develops students’ lifelong mindsets about learning; it is an inquiry-based approach toward uncovering new information, challenging assumptions, and demonstrating ongoing learning over a period of time. High-quality PBL provides our young learners the opportunity to experience intellectual challenges and accomplishments, often based on real-world, authentic tasks that are connected to their lives and what happens in the world around them.

PBL further introduces opportunities for collaboration and communication amongst team members, helping to develop the necessary project-management skills that enable students to proceed effectively from project initiation to completion. This may look different based on the grade level of students or the content being taught, which is why it’s important that teachers have the opportunity to meet with their grade-level teams, collaborate with committees, or attend conferences with other field experts to increase our knowledge. So how do teachers Level Up their preparation? It starts with reviewing the goals set forth during the previous school year because determining how well we accomplished certain initiatives allows us to make the necessary changes for the upcoming school year.

Back in 2021, under new action to implement more Gold-Standard ProjectBased Learning across campus, Dawson offered a school-wide training during our February Teacher Academy, a week-long session of professional development workshops for all faculty and staff. Later that same year, a cohort of 18 Dawson teachers participated in a threeday workshop offered by PBLWorks (PBLworks. org), an organization whose mission is to help build the capacity of teachers to design and facilitate quality PBL with all students. This allowed faculty to expand our knowledge of implementing PBL within our curriculum and effectively execute a well-designed PBL lesson. During the summer of 2022, several of my amazing colleagues and I had the opportunity to attend the PBL 201 sessions at the PBL World conference in California. This helped to further extend our knowledge of successfully implementing a Gold-Standard PBL and allowed my team to revisit and revise our initiatives with a deeper focus on intentionally setting our students up for success.

Collaborating as a grade level or content area team is a great way to create cohesion and consistency. Whether you are a new or seasoned teacher or on a new team or the same team, there is always room for improvement. Fellow fourth-grade teacher Rachael Stratmeyer and I attended the PBL World Conference with the main focus of taking ourselves and our students to the next level. We each revamped one of our social studies units, and Rachael specifically focused on Nevada’s Indigenous Peoples unit, which quickly turned into a favorite of our students. This project not only teaches students about the lives of Indigenous People before and after the presence of settlers, but it also allows students to focus on the driving question, “How can we lead our community in showing reverence for Nevada’s Indigenous People?” For their culminating activity, students are asked to make a proposal that depicts how they will honor Nevada’s Indigenous People with a sculpture or mural of their design displayed on campus, a public exhibition of their work. This allows for student voice, choice, feedback, and reflection during an authentic learning experience.

Dawson additionally continues to move forward in our pursuit of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for all on campus. A team approach that seeks to accomplish a sense of belonging for all led the School to create an opportunity for staff members to apply to become an ambassador for DEI work and serve on the School’s main leadership teams. Our DEI ambassadors went through a rigorous selection process and were chosen because of a devoted commitment to Dawson’s Diversity Statement and the willingness to examine and evaluate our school culture through an inclusivity lens. In an effort to build a community where each individual is included and treated equitably, Dawson’s DEI Ambassadors work to intentionally cultivate an environment where students learn the essential skills and tools necessary to thrive in an ever-changing, interconnected, and globally diverse world.

As one of Dawson’s five DEI ambassadors, I am also a proud member of our campus People and Culture team. This team collaborates closely with Head of School Roxanne Stansbury and Director of Human Resources India Barton to facilitate and support the School’s transformational change processes through organizing and implementing the school’s strategic DEI goals. We are always looking at how we can Level Up the initiatives we have set for our faculty and staff. After my experience of attending the PBL World conference this past summer, I further found areas where we could apply equity levers across our DEI work. Ambassadors have a range of responsibilities when leading and engaging in DEI initiatives, some of which also includes the teaching and learning taking place in classrooms. Last summer, time was set aside for the People and Culture team to review and revise our initiatives; we reflected on the work we did as a team over the previous school year and began to plan for the new year. We poured over data that informed us of the areas in which we had direct im- pact and others where we could give input to best drive our future decisions.

The true accomplishment of both DEI and PBL on campus happens when the efforts are interconnected. Dawson as a center of academic excellence is only achievable when an understanding of each is evident in all work. This is how we create personalized learning in which every student plays a direct role. Both are successful only when the interests, strengths, and needs of all students are addressed for the advancement of the school we all share, and there is intentionality behind the work we do to ensure we integrate our learning across all les - sons and content. With our students at the forefront, I am very grateful for the opportunities our entire Dawson community continues to provide to our incredible faculty and staff for ongoing personal and professional growth. Working together, I’m excited to illustrate how we all can continue to Level Up year after year and well into a boundless future.

Fourth-grade student reflections about their Indigienous Peoples PBL

“This project was different because it has a lot of things for us to work on. My favorite part of this project was making the posters.”

~Alexander Briggs

“(My favorite part was) doing the proposal.”

~Bosco Melendez

“It was different because we learned about Indigenous Peoples, and we also respected them.”

~Charles Michelson