Chant Thomas

Propel student learning by using play-based STEM lessons to create an inquiry-based science classroom environment. Implement lessons which include magnets, gears, whiffle balls, a tin can band, simple machines, plants, funnels, sensory tubs, paint, and more to meet preschool and early childhood science standards! Life science, physical science, earth science, and space science will all be covered in the easy to use, engaging, and teacher friendly text.

The pandemic and racial injustice are amazing opportunities for teachers. If we are all to rise together to navigate our global crises, the new generation needs us to provide a new kind of learning. Young people need to understand how their behavior affects the behavior of viruses, influences the climate, and how their lives affect others whose life experience is different from their own. They need to know what they stand for and be ready to act for a greater good. These are challenging new capacities. To develop them, our students need a kind of learning that begins with understanding themselves more fully than has been common in school. 

When instruction moves online teachers need to prepare a digital space for learning, just like the physical classroom.  Designing online math instruction requires a blended approach of synchronous and asynchronous instruction coupled with distance learning activities to support exploration of concepts and development of procedural skills.  Technology tools to build students’ efficacy in math must be developmentally appropriate and aligned with student’s ability and interest.  This means online instruction must be highly personalized and accessible to all learners.   Delivering digital math instruction can be powerful with virtual manipulatives at your fingertips for teachers to model and students to demonstrate.

In the original Google Classroom course, we were introduced to the basic features of Google Classroom and put them to use with students. In the second Google Classroom course, we took our practices to the next level by building a simple website, upping our communication with parents/guardians, and rocking some rubrics. In this course, we will explore features that are desperately needed in a Distance Learning environment. We will practice attaching and annotating PDF files, explore grading and returning question answers, attach videos we've made ourselves, as well as an individual assignment where you explore the EDU 90 series to find what works best for you.

This course is designed to help teachers to learn various ways to connect and support students virtually. Course participants will learn how to effectively create, facilitate, and distribute content to virtual learners. Educators will create motivational and relevant classroom activities, teacher support materials, and assessment tools.
(Ex. - Seesaw, Google Classroom, Epic!, Remind, Screencastify, and more)

Through self-regulation, students of all ages can take charge of their effect and behavior towards their learning. Teaching kids to control themselves involves providing skills and strategies for students to be able to engage in their learning; knowing when and how to take a break, how they feel and think about each activity, and be able to be confident with assignments that they take home. In the assigned text, Dr. Richard Cash has compiled research-based theories and strategies that can easily be implemented in your K-12 classroom. Supporting videos and articles will enable you and your school to be able to foster a culture of self-regulated learners in your classroom.

Think of a lesson that you currently teach – perhaps it’s fractions, structuring complex sentences, Spanish, healthy eating, anything…..  Imagine having students learn the basics of the lesson at home – with video or animation that they can re-watch as many times as necessary until they grasp the concepts. Then classroom time can be spent expanding the lesson and digging deeper into the concept, or helping students in the specific areas where they need help to master the lesson, or complete what was once called “homework.” This is how flipping works – either a lesson or an entire curriculum – and is taking the K-12 world by storm.

Flipping offers numerous benefits for students and teachers – it allows students to learn at their own pace, helps solve the issues of incomplete homework and absent students, helps teachers work with students alone/pairs/groups to meet the many differing needs of our students, allows the classroom time to be used for exploring concepts deeper and more fully.

In this course you will learn:

• The benefits of flipping
• How to flip a lesson, and make it easy by doing one lesson at a time
• How flipping positively affects student achievement
• how to flip when students do not have access to technology at home
• What the flipped lesson/classroom looks like.

Here’s a 3-minute video on the flipped classroom ~ enjoy!

(On a personal note - I was very reluctant to flip my math class and now will not go back to traditional teaching – this is why I am offering this course. I have seen so much improvement with my students’ knowledge and assessment scores that it amazes me.) Used text on Amazon costs about $8. This class is appropriate for teachers of all levels, K-12.

It’s harder than ever to know where the truth can be found today in public media. Since the 2016 presidential election in the United States, both the political as well as social polarization in America has sunk to new lows. While this reflects historic social, political and ideational differences, the widening gulf in media reporting, including fake news, is a main contributor to the breakdown in finding the “truth” as bias pushes narratives on different sides further apart, each side claiming fact-based truth.  Common ground and bipartisanship is all but lost. In this course for secondary teachers we will explore fake news and bias in all media platforms and its effects on public attitudes and actions. Participants will develop the tools, skills, and strategies to help students be able to break through the barriers of disinformation to find the truth within the agendas being pushed by governmental, and outside powers of influence. Our text, Fact vs. Fiction: Teaching Critical Thinking Skills in the Age of Fake News, is $24 on amazon.

In this diversified driving tour experience, you’ll make your way to at least 18 cultural, historical, and or natural sites in Central Oregon (from Warm Springs to Prineville), where you’ll discover the natural and human history of this area.

If we are to be faithful to the Declaration of Independence and the preamble to our Constitution we must reckon that the growing inequalities in America are not morally and practically sustainable. In our current geopolitical and social climate, there are significant factors that divide American society. This course will examine some of those issues including housing segregation, education inequities, social displacement leading to drug addiction, loss of democratic representation, immigration, toxic localities and domestic worker disenfranchisement.

Issues and traumas from childhood combined with current personal and professional stress can cause any of us to feel lost and disengaged with life. But we don’t have to stay that way. Celebrated life coach, Martha Beck lays out a clearly defined path to recover a vital sense of self using her text and journal titled Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live, the basis for this course.

Join this class to discover how to cultivate you and your student's right brain creativity and curiosity. Explore basic drawing skills and techniques while tapping into the Right Side of the Brain. You'll learn the fundamentals of creative right brain basic drawing, Gestalt, light and shadow, space, edges, and these relationships to each other while building creative drawing confidence.