A proud Wisconsin native, guest blogger Erin Cassedy, is in her 8th year at Hammond Middle School in Alexandria, VA where she teaches ELL (English Language Learners). She has also taught in China, Hong Kong, and Wisconsin. This summer she’ll travel to Mongolia for a five- week summer teaching program.
My brother, Kyle DeRoos, has worked for Playworks ever since he moved from the Midwest to Oakland, CA. It was his first job out of college; but he must love it, because he's been there over ten years. Last fall at the northern Virginia middle school where I teach, I saw a Playworks t-shirt coming down the hallway. I had to stop the student. Isaiah, the 6th grade student, told me that when he was a 5th grader in Washington D.C., he was a part of the Playworks Junior Coach Leadership Program. I smiled to myself thinking about the connection that extended from the west coast to the east coast.
As a middle school English Language Learner (ELL) teacher, it is my job to assist classroom teachers in modifying and differentiating the lessons to make them accessible for their ELL students. I was recently working on the unit “Powerful Agents of Change” for our 8th grade language arts students. For the final project, the students were asked to look at a problem in their community and propose an innovative solution. As an ELL teacher, I am always looking for ways to connect their learning to their lives, to their experiences, and make it real for them. I tried to think about someone who the students could relate to who had made a change. Suddenly, I thought of the Playworks t-shirt that I had seen, and everything started to come together for a very meaningful lesson.
For the reflection lesson my students and I watched the An In-Depth Look at School Recess video on the Playworks website. It focuses on challenges that plague many playgrounds and how Coach Jam was able to work towards change in one school. The students then read how Playworks began when Jill Vialet was inspired to help an elementary school principal who was struggling with students who fought at recess.
Isaiah, now a 7th grade student, shared how being a Playworks junior coach in D.C. had affected his life and how he was a part of the solution to stop the aggression on the playground. Jill Vialet was also extremely gracious; she joined our class one morning in December via Skype, to answer all the students’ questions about Playworks: how it began, how it grew, and what some of the challenges are. She also talked about the need for empathy in today’s world.
The students were truly engaged and moved by their video chat with Jill. Following the conversation, they shared their reactions: inspiring, creative, knows how to get things moving, and caring. The lesson was inspiring for me and for my co-teachers. I hope one day my students will be, like Jill Vialet, powerful agents of change and that they will be on the other side of a Skype interview sharing how their ideas impacted others.
