When Crystal Beach came to Lakeview Academy two years ago, the students hopped online and tried to dig up her history on Google.
Then, the teacher turned the tables on them.
“What are people going to find when they Google you?” she asked her students.
Beach creatively embraces technology in her English classes, and her innovation recently won her an Emerging Leaders award from the International Society for Technology in Education. The 27-year-old teacher was one of five recipients selected from a pool of national and international applicants.
“She is not afraid to use whatever is cutting edge nationally and she makes a real effort to make sure that she’s on the cusp of what’s going on in technology,” Lakeview Principal John Kennedy said. “I taught English for years. And what she brings to the classroom is almost beyond what I could have even imagined.”
Beach, who teaches 10th, 11th and 12th grades, said her approach to implementing technology in her classroom is based in challenging, motivating and engaging her students.
Instead of writing traditional book reports, her students created video book trailers, in the style of movie trailers, which summarized their readings but also analyzed deeper themes.
“I want them thinking critically about the transitions they’re including, the font choices they’re including, the color selection, the music,” Beach said. “All of that is tying into their analysis of
that story.”
Beach also uses blogs in her classes, on either a group or individual basis.
“I’m just looking for ways to extend our classroom conversations,” Beach said. “Our kids are working in multiliterate ways, outside of our school walls as well as within. It provides that platform to really engage with that application in the real world.”
On a departmental level, she is instrumental in running the English teachers’ wiki, a collaborative website for sharing ideas and teaching materials.
A large part of Beach’s technology-based curriculum is rooted in social media responsibility.
It’s not enough to teach the teens how to use the tools, she said.
They need to know how to use them safely and build a protected digital footprint for themselves.
“It’s something you always have to think about when you’re including technology,” she said. “And it’s not just what’s going on inside my classroom, but when they walk outside of my door every day into the real world.”
Beach will receive her award on June 26 in front of a crowd of 2,000 people at International Society for Technology in Education’s annual conference in Philadelphia. She found out about her award around April Fools’ Day and in shock, had her mother read the letter to make sure it wasn’t a joke.
“I became a teacher because I did want to impact kids,” she said. “...Every day I enter a classroom with very unique vibrant personalities and the multiliterate ways I can engage those unique learners, it makes teaching fun.”