A Techie SPED Teacher in Washington DC

Teacher Sol is Maria Lourdes C. Angala from Washington DC. She is blogging at http://teachersol.blogspot.com and has a virtual classroom http://digitalanthology.blogspot.com.

 As a special education teacher, Ms. Angala brings with her extensive academic experience which translates to a classroom environment that fosters student achievement and academic progress. Understandably, the challenges confronting special education teachers require that the teacher modify curriculum and develop alternative methods to assess skills mastery. Ms. Angala’s classroom reflects the instructional methodologies implemented through creative and innovative strategies.

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Ms. Angala facilitates student directed activities such as creating personal story lines. Students create and illustrate the story line using a variety of media. Throughout the story line, which eventually relates the students’ personal history, the rules of English are emphasized. This particular activity provides instruction and understanding of the content area for all kinds of learners in a manner that students sanction as fun and interesting.

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Ms. Angala’s students are hesitant writers when they started out with her during the first days of the school year. They could not even start writing a poem or a story with a given topic. It was a struggle for them to write. 

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Applying what she has learned from her professional development trainings and conferences, she integrated technology to her curriculum.  The publishing of her students’ works through their class website positively motivate her students to write better each time. She is able to miraculously make her students write meaningful poems about themselves, about social problems and current events. They were able to create beautiful illustrations for their wonderful poems too. Her classroom is full of her students’ work on display. They read their poems to the whole class, and they get feedbacks from each other. She created her class website http://digitalanthology.blogspot.com  which showcases her students’ works, lesson plans, and class resources.  The readers (who are not only the teachers and students in the school but a national and international audience) give good feedbacks that make each of them smile and anticipate for more comments about their works.

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Ms. Angala has the respect and full support of the school administrators, parents, and the school community. Ms. Angala received several grants from DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee, The Washington Post Grants in Education and DonorsChoose for her classroom projects. She recently won the International ActivSoftware Inspire blogging competition and won an entire ActivClassroom which she will be donating to the special education department of her school. She also received the DCPS Excellence in Education Award for three consecutive years in 2005-2007.

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Ms. Angala currently serves as a school wide leader being in the School Advisory Committee. She also serves as The Washington Teachers Union Vice President of Special Education, and the acting Secretary of the DC Chapter of the Council for Exceptional Children. With her leadership roles, she makes sure that she is actively involved in school, district and national professional circles by participating and servicing on committees and contributing to the profession as an advocate for special needs students. She makes sure to become part of the solution to the problems in special education in her school and in her district.  Ms. Angala is very active in professional learning circles. She shares new information on special education with parents and colleagues across the nation in innovative ways through her educator’s blog http://teachersol.blogspot.com . She collaborates with her colleagues in the profession even outside the school  to share proven  ideas, borrow effective  strategies from them, so they can help her solve problems that she has in her classroom for her students to receive the best possible services from her as their teacher.  Currently, Ms. Angala is a candidate to the National Board Certification. To further her professional development, aside from in-school PD trainings, she also attends at least one district training and national conference related to classroom teaching and/ or special education. At least twice a month, she updates herself with the latest from the US Dept of Education Digital Workshops, Online Conferences and Webinars. Ms. Angala constantly seeks for new and better ideas, new information, and improved skills that she can bring back to her classroom for her students to perform at or above expectations. 

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Ms. Angala collaborated with the Filipino Teachers Network http://pinoyteachersnetwork.blog-city.com , which is a Professional Learning Network of professional Filipino teachers across the world. It is already a growing e-community forged with the values of commitment and cooperation among professional Filipino teacher leaders. The project has the dimension of global collaboration, multiculturalism, and writing across the curriculum. For one thing, with the online publishing of Ms. Angala’s students’ works and collaborating with the Filipino teachers on giving feedback to their works, the students get to practice their writing skills.  They learn how to organize their thoughts and present their ideas in a more linear way.  They also get to meet other teachers (and eventually students) all over the world and share their experiences with them.  After all, we are coming into the age of information and we are now living in one global village.