Five Bethel Park teachers have been selected for this year’s transformED Teacher Innovation Fellowship, which aims to convene 15 of the area’s top teacher leaders interested in instructional innovation to incubate new approaches to teaching and learning. The fellows each meet a few times in person, and they’ll each receive a mini-grant of $1,500 to experiment within their classrooms.
Katelynn Heider (Learning Support/Autistic Support): Focusing on opportunities to create a classroom for students who would benefit from a curriculum focused on being active participants in ADL skills and having sensory-driven learning experiences.
Jess Mahoney (Autistic Support): Focusing on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion pre-packaged lesson kits/cases to use in any classroom.
Lynne Surrena (Speech Language): Looking at more community-based instruction activities within the school setting to support more functional communication skills.
Melissa Toth (Life Skills) & Jenine Wessel (Speech Language): Utilizing Speech Language games and activities to socialize students with speech language needs and skills supports. All students would be learning/practicing a skill from the week in ELA while playing a game to include and practice social skills. All students would be learning/practicing a skill from the week in ELA while playing a game to include and practice social skills.
The fellowship will allow them to focus more on their problem of practice/big idea to ultimately determine how to utilize their mini-grant funding.