geek.teacher

Hello Pine Glen Teachers!
I just wanted to write this quick letter of introduction to you so you’d have an idea of who I am and what kinds of services I can offer you this year as your new technology specialist. My name is Dan Callahan, and I spent the previous eight years as a Special Education teacher in a Middle School just outside of Philadelphia. I spent my time in the classroom learning and doing a lot of the things you’ve been working on implementing in the past year. My school started on the RTI model of tiered instruction two years ago, and I have many years of experience with several different reading programs. I’ve also been trained in Responsive Classroom, so I’d love to get into some morning meetings with all of your classes.

Taking a cue from Dr. Conti’s district goals, I can see three broad areas where I can help support you:

• Instruction: Maybe you have in mind a very specific idea of a way that you can use technology in your classroom or in a lesson in the lab. Maybe you don’t, but you feel there’s a place where something can fit. I can help you at any step in the process from brainstorming up to execution by co-teaching a lesson with you. I don’t know every single tool out there, but I’m willing to learn with you as the situation deems appropriate.
• Technology: Beyond instruction, I can help you try and find ways that technology can make your life easier, or to help your traditional lessons have a broader scope.  You might be looking for a way to collect data or assignments more easily, or maybe you want to have your students share their work with a wider audience than just yourself. I can help you with those.
• Communication: Using the latest Internet tools, there are a lot of ways to make it easier than ever for you to share your resources with each other and to share what’s going on in your classroom with your students’ parents and the larger community. Besides me just helping you find stuff, I can help you develop your own networks for finding useful information relevant to your interests and the needs of your classrooms.

I’ll expand on all of this in time, but this e-mail is getting far too long as is. I know you’ve got a million things to do right now, but if you have a chance, stop by the lab to meet me and discuss any ideas you might have for this year.
Good luck with the start of the school year!
Dan

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