Meet Mrs. Martin
By Brooke Allen, Executive Director
Did you know that the Diverse Learners Cooperative works with all teachers - whether they’re new or have many years of experience? One of the DLC Teacher Leader Fellows last year was Mrs. Martin, a teacher with over 30 years of experience. Because of our generous donors’ support, we’re able to meet teachers like Mrs. Martin at any stage of their career to become even more effective educators.
Mrs. Martin is currently the only English Learner teacher for all of Bellevue Middle School, so her students range from 5th to 8th graders, and all have different levels of English, depending on how long they’ve been in the country. Some of her students last year were newcomers, meaning they had just arrived to the U.S. and enrolled at Bellevue Middle, and some of her students had identified disabilities, so they needed additional specialized support in addition to language support.
Just the thought of meeting everyone’s needs and helping all of her students grow with only one hour of instruction per day seemed nearly impossible. When faced with the challenge of how to personalize instruction for each student, the DLC Fellowship director encouraged her in her idea to utilize technology. While this wasn’t the way Mrs. Martin normally did things, with the support of her DLC mentor, she worked with the technology teacher at her school to learn and set up personalized lessons on the school laptops for her students when they came to her class. Little did she know, the program she learned would be the same one used district-wide during the pandemic! Her students were much more prepared to continue to learn virtually than many other students.
Because of her participation in the DLC Fellowship, and the implementation of new technology, Mrs. Martin’s students made significant progress while they were with her. At the end of the Fellowship, Mrs. Martin reported feeling more effective as a teacher! This year, Mrs. Martin is part of our English Learner Teacher Cohort, and she continues to work tirelessly to help her students succeed. Thanks to our donors, teachers like Mrs. Martin can have a strong network of support during these isolating times. In the end, teachers AND their students benefit from your partnership in the work!
Thank you again.
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