Shelly Fryer Review
Shelly Fryer is an amazing teacher who deeply cares about her students. As a future teacher, Shelly is someone who I now look up to and aspire to become like some day. As an accomplished teacher, winning the PBS digital Innovator Award in 2015, she firmly beleives in giving her students a voice. She approachers her students with love and compassion, and listens to them in order to find out how they learn best. She lets students have a sense of independence and lets them choose ways in which they learn best. Shelly beleives that everyone can be educated and that everyone can be succesfful in this life, and that is why she spent years teaching 3rd and 4th graders at Positive Tomorrow, a school in Oklahoma who helps educate homeless children. Shelly believes that it is crucial for kids to have a 1:1 iPad-Student ratio. Shelly lets technology take a big role in her classroom and she has proved time and time again that technology can benefit students greatly. Shelly is now using her platfrom for much more than just teaching. Shelly is also a author, speaker, and advocate. Shelly has an amazing website where she dives deep into who she is, what she stands for, and what she has accomplished.
Something I really loved while reading Shelly Fryers website is the importance of "screen free, old-school, unstructured play." Shelly describes a day where her students participated in Global School Play Day, a day completely dedicated to unstructured play. She explains how important it is for our kids to have imagination and to let loose and play. Shelly explains how this is a great way to build strong relationships with students. Wether we know it or not, our students have an extreme amount of stress in their daily lives, especially the homeless kids that Shelly works with. Letting kids experiment with imagination and play is a great way to relieve this stress. This ultimately lets kids grow emotionally and academically.
Another great thing I learned from Shelly is the importance of "making your students LOVE learning." It is nearly impossible to teach a group of students are are un-motivated to learn and who do not want to be there. That is why it is so important in getting your kids to genuinely love learning! How do you do this though? Shelly has so many great ideas on how to get your students to love learning. The first thing Shelly explains is that you must create a "family atmosphere." You have to build a classroom of respect, empathy, compassion, and love. These relationships must be from teacher to student but also student to student. This makes so much sense to me because the best classroom I have ever had were classes where i felt close to my classmates. Classmates and teachers I cared about and who I knew cared about me. If you can get your students to love the classroom they are in, make freinds, and have them understand that their teacher cares about them, they will begin to love to learn!
In the end, I loved learning more about Shelly, her accomplishments, and her ideas. Shelly is such a innovative, amazing teacher who puts her students before herself. I cannot wait to incorporate her ideas, strategies, and lessons into my classroom someday!