Dara Martin's Petrie Dish
by Ted Shaffner
Dara Martin treats her English classes like a petrie dish, constantly adding ingredients to the mix to see how they will change the composition. The true spirit of innovation is not necessarily about technology or even new ideas, but about teachers continuing to reinvent themselves so they can approach the material in new ways, bringing it to life for themselves and their students. In the video below, Ms. Martin talks about what innovation means to hear, and explains three new experiments she is working on this year: the Music Free-Write, Hot Topics, and the Six-Word-Symbolic-Selfie, all of which help her students learn how to balance structure and freedom, as well as give them ownership of the material and find their own voices. Ms. Martin's students know her as a hard teacher, but they are also well aware of how much they grow as a result of how deeply she engages with them.
