Biography
My name is LeAnn Hays. I live in Murfreesboro, TN where I work as the librarian/media specialist at the Homer Pittard Campus School. My school is the lab school for Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU). As part of this partnership, I also teach classes in the Elementary and Special Education Department for MTSU. I attended MTSU for both my Bachelor's and Master's degrees. Before becoming a librarian, I taught middle school language arts for ten years. Prior to teaching, I worked for MTSU as the Assistant Director for Alumni Relations. I have a husband, Johnny, and two children, Kathryn and John.
I support the concept of reading/writing workshop and have used both extensively in my own classroom. For the past three years, I have been involved with the Environmental, Global, and Futures Curriculum for project-based learning. I have enjoyed this partnership and believe it to be most beneficial for students. I also believe in children having ownership in their learning, their classroom, and their school. I think children should work from a point of authenticity and purpose. Mostly, I believe that children should be heard and that teachers must listen. We don't always have to agree or say yes...but we must listen.
I have used technology in a variety of ways in the classroom. Specifically, I would like to explain my most recent attempt. Last school year, my students undertook an awareness campaign to educate our community on the benefits of native planting. The students and I worked for several days to establish project outcomes. The technological requirement was that each group of students would develop a PowerPoint presentation to take with them as they met with groups throughout our community. This proved to be very challenging with significant ability differences in the students' experiences with using technology. We scheduled several sessions with our school technology specialist for lessons on design. We scheduled one session with a marketing/advertising professional for lessons on content and presentation. We spent several weeks working in groups to create the final products, which we also posted onto the EFG (It's Your Environment) website. This website is used by schools across the country to showcase projects. In the end and with lots of work, the students made multi-media presentations to over 15 communtiy, civic and government groups in our community. I enjoyed this project and really learned a lot about teaching children to use technology...not just watching the teacher use it.