WE ARE
Kentucky teachers who formally engage with the Prichard Committee to launch strategic initiatives designed for local improvement with education at the core and to turn teacher-identified education priorities into reality through action research in classrooms across the state.
WE BELIEVE
This fellowship can serve as a model for effective professional learning that catalyzes teacher leadership and transforms schools and districts while keeping our best teachers in the classroom. Teachers working outside of their day-to-day context see their practice, routines and policies in new ways and are able to facilitate school-based innovations.
WE SHARE
An annual letter from Kentucky teachers crystalizing our priorities and making recommendations for action.
2022 Teacher Fellows
CARLY BALDWIN
Boyd County High School
My Journey into Ungrading
Scene: Fall 2019. End of the nine-week grading term is tomorrow. I am checking grades put into our grading software. 89.5 automatically rounds to a 90. 89.4 does not. I round up the 89.4 anyway.
I teach, and students learn.
Scene: Spring 2020. COVID-19 shuts down school to in-person learning. Our SBDM votes to give…
ROB COLLINS
Greenup County High School
Making Space and Respecting Student Identity
At the start of last school year, I made a decision that I swiftly came to regret and one that I have worked to undo ever since.
For context, I am an English, theater, and creative writing teacher in Greenup County, Kentucky. We are rural eastern Kentuckians, and Greenup is a place where our identity is defined…
JIM DAVIS
Greenwood High School
Faculty Antiracism Groups Needed to Address Achievement Gap Crisis
Last December, like so many Bowling Green and Western Kentucky residents, I huddled with my family in our basement, trying to track the violent storms marching our way that had knocked out power and phone service. We felt lucky to have a safe hiding place but helpless and scared, waiting….
ASHLEY GLICKLEY
Hawthorne Elementary School
Developing an Explorer Mindset Benefits Teachers, Too
How can the attitudes of an Explorer Mindset (curious, responsible, and empowered) lead to teacher leadership within a school? As my colleagues and I returned last fall and set out to cultivate an explorer mindset for the first full year of in-person instruction since the pandemic began, I was determined to…
DEBRA GLOVER
Hazelwood Elementary School
Transforming Professional Learning Communities: Tips for Coaches and Administrators
If you have had the pleasure of working in a public school in any capacity in the past 20 years, you are probably very familiar with the phrase Professional Learning Community (PLC). The term has been thrown around quite loosely for decades and can mean…
CHRISTINE HOLAJTER
Georgetown Middle School
Building Connections for Student Success: Creating a Mentoring Program for Middle School Students
A new perspective on what students need to be successful
March 13th, 2020 will be a day I will always remember. Much like 9/11 or when the Challenger fell to Earth, it stands in my memory like a beacon, a marker that changed everything……
AMANDA KLARE
Beechwood Elementary School
Make Students Love to Read Again
This was my fourteenth-year teaching fourth grade. I know my contractual duties are to teach and assess the fourth grade English Language Arts standards; however, before this year even began, I set another professional growth goal for myself. Given the tragic consequences of missing crucial years of learning, I felt it vital to make reading fun again….
CHARLENE MARTIN
Paintsville High School
Using Classroom Assessment to More Effectively Engage Students? It’s Possible!
“Grading is not only confusing but may actually cause harm” (Kittle & Gallagher, 2021, 38).
Part I: As we consider why students are becoming increasingly disengaged, it strikes me that we hear little about the role of classroom assessment and its impact on student motivation and achievement…
STACIE MAY
Rowan County Middle School
The Connection between Vulnerability and Student Success
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change”
-Brené Brown
It is hard to be vulnerable opening ourselves to criticism, constructive or otherwise, allowing access to our worries, our flaws, and the questions that we have but don’t dare ask aloud. However, if Brene Brown is right….
BRIDGET POWELL
Central Elementary School
Building a New Normal: Fostering Resilience in Elementary Students
During the early days of the 2021 school year, I knew this year was different. Many of my students displayed signs of trauma like not speaking up, being reluctant to make eye contact, not wanting to work in groups, and appearing shy and secluded from peers. The first week of school “get to know each other” activities felt strained…
ANDY SMITH
Paul Laurance Dunbar High School
Student-Driven Learning: Igniting Passion Through Community Connection
For most of my twenty-year education career, I have worked to connect students to the world in which they live. This year with the support of my fellow Prichard Committee Fellows and coaches, I narrowed my focus to the following philosophical and programmatic questions…
AMANDA THOMPSDON
Western Middle School
Empowering Student Voice
Engaging learners in social justice through action and ownership.
“We’ll need to talk loud for the camera,” Sifa Daudi says as she takes the seat across from 6th grader Aniya Buckner.
Teller Penzant, an eighth-grader like Sifa, brings the camera closer to Aniya before adjusting the volume. He turns to Sifa and says, “Ready.”…
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“To realize the promise of teacher leadership, opportunities like this fellowship propel teachers into new spheres of influence that enable us to practice the necessary skills and acquire the knowledge only fieldwork can teach. We welcome the Prichard Committee into this essential domain and invite the 2021 Teacher Fellows into this most urgent conversation.”
-Lauren Hill, a Fayette County teacher & Fellows facilitator