Emily Schwenk - ECCS Edwin Parr Nomination - May 27th, 2022
The ECCS board was proud to nominate Emily Schwenk for the 2021-22 Edwin Parr awards.
We are happy to nominate Emily Schwenk for the Edwin Parr award. The first year of teaching is always a difficult one, but Emily has had the added challenge of navigating in a new format. As a new Online Learning teacher, there is an extra lens to consider for developing teachers.
Emily has responded well to this added dimension, learning first how to adapt to it, and then progressing on to leveraging the online format to help her achieve success with her students, using items such as a document camera, Zoom polls, Canva design tools, Yuja video creation tools, etc. and fitting them all into her Canvas courses.
We know that teaching is primarily about relationships. Emily puts in the time and the effort to find a way to connect with each of her students and their family. We have a wide variety of households, families and situations in our online school. Emily has been extremely flexible in her approach, doing whatever it takes to connect (including starting to watch NFL football to be able to use it as a hook with one of her students, reading books over the phone with one of her paper based students whose parent’s religion don’t allow access to the internet, etc.). This willingness to connect is evident in her Zoom classes where students are quick to participate, yet are very respectful of classroom norms.
As an admin team, we have seen Emily respond really quickly to feedback, often incorporating suggestions in her practice within days (and maintaining it from that point on). Some first year teachers get by using past teacher’s materials or “teaching from the book”. Emily tends to want to improve the existing program by doing things like adding engaging activities full of student voice and choice, as well as creating short videos to exemplify concepts or introduce assignments (she often models part of the activity engaging students with glimpses of her life experiences). In some cases, Emily has enough confidence to completely replace existing program material, redesigning activities and assessments from scratch, and is able to back up and justify program changes with sound educational reasons. This is quite remarkable in a new teacher, in a new format where altering content is extremely demanding due to online course design requirements.
Emily seems to approach everything in a positive way, and definitely exudes enthusiasm with her classes. Students in her classes are not only exposed to a vibrant positive energy every day, but see how she gets excited for difficult concepts or questions. She models how to approach tackling challenges, even doing lessons on how to deal with feeling getting frustrated, and how to retain a growth mindset.
Michel Despins
Principal School of Hope