NEWS Walnut Valley Unified School District
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 880 S. Lemon Avenue
April 10, 2013 Walnut, CA 91789
Contact:
Kelli Gile, Office of Community Resources
(909) 595-1261 ext. 31204
Suzanne Teacher Named to Dream Team
WALNUT, CA—Helen Papadopoulos, math and drama teacher at Suzanne Middle School, has been selected to the 2013 LearnZillion Dream Team.
More than 3,000 teachers, instructional coaches, and administrators from across the country applied, and only 200 were chosen to the highly selective Dream Team. These teachers were chosen based on their understanding of the Common Core Standards, and their ability to create high-quality, highly conceptual lessons that are easily understood by their students.
“I wanted to be a part of the Dream Team because I am passionate about our movement towards implementing the common core standards. It’s important that not only our teachers have resources, but that those same resources are also made available to our students and parents. That’s what LearnZillion’s all about,” said the 2007 California Teacher of the Year and 2012 Bravo Award winner.
Members will receive an all-expense paid trip to San Francisco in May for TeachFest through the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. TeachFest is an intensive professional development conference that kicks off the Dream Team experience. Based on the “hack fest” model popularized by computer programmers who spend weekends coding and trading tips, teachers will spend three days at TeachFest working with Common Core experts, content specialists and other Dream Team teachers to better understand the new standards and the best ways to teach them. LearnZillion provides teachers with the technology and support they need to translate their classroom into screencasts, a sophisticated but simple use of the computer screen for teaching.
After TeachFest, Dream Team teachers will capture their proven approaches and teaching methods in concise lessons that will then be made available for free to every student, teacher, and parent through LearnZillion’s online platform at LearnZillion.com. More than 100,000 teachers are registered for the free site as well as 1.5 million students. More than 400,000 teachers and students view LearnZillion lessons each month from hundreds of countries around the world. Throughout the process, Dream Team teachers are motivated by the concept of “scaling their impact” beyond the walls of their own classrooms and schools. By sharing their lessons online, all students and teachers can benefit from the expertise of Dream Team teachers.
Shown:
Suzanne Middle School Teacher Helen Papadopoulos has been named to the 2013 LearnZillion Dream Team.