About Mr. ThomassonI have been teaching for twelve years, and seven of those were in Kings Mountain High School in Kings Mountain, North Carolina (close to Charlotte). Three years ago, I moved to Forestview High School in Gastonia, where I teach AP Language, Desktop Publishing, and American Literature.
I have a B.A. in Creative Writing from University of North Carolina: Asheville, and an M.A.T. from Western Carolina University. I am also a National Board Certified Teacher in Secondary English. I have a kindergarten-aged daughter, a cat, and a black Great Dane. I am a gardener (when I can find the dirt), a musician, poet, and writer. The trinity of my favorite bands is R.E.M., The Avett Brothers, and The Decemberists; however, I also have a soft spot in my musical heart for John Coltrane, Jill Scott, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Outkast, and pre-Sugarland Jennifer Nettles. I have also developed a certain fondness for Dave Matthews Band due to some concerted influence by certain cross-country collaborative partners. Favorite books: The Things They Carried (Tim O’Brien); Something Rising, Light and Swift (Haven Kimmel); Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell); The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz). Favorite poems: “Ulysses” (Tennyson); “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (Eliot); “A Color of the Sky” (Hoagland); “On a Drawing By Flavio” (Levine); “Seeing the Bones” (Maxine Kumin). Favorite cakes: Carrot and German Chocolate (separately, of course). |
About Ms. MorrisI have been teaching for eleven years, in various public schools around the San Francisco Bay Area. Most recently, I was at San Lorenzo High School, but now I am at the fabulous Del Mar Middle School in Tiburon, California teaching 6th grade English and History.
I have a B.A. in English Literature, with an emphasis on South African literature and theatre, and a B.A. in History, with an emphasis on political culture in sub-Saharan Africa. I have a teaching credential from Touro University in Vallejo, and am currently working on both my M.A. in Education and my National Boards Teacher Certification. I have travelled all over the world, but my favourite place (so far) is Cape Town, South Africa. I have also been to more than 30 of the United States, and lived in every West Coast state (except Alaska). I really enjoy the time I've spent living in Kaua'i, Cape Town, Seattle, and now, Marin. My favourite books are: 1. Disgrace (J. M. Coetzee) 2. The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky) 3. Country of My Skull (Anjie Krog) 4. The Waves (Virginia Woolf) My favourite bands are: 1. Dave Matthews Band 2. Guster 3. Avett Brothers 4. Mumford and Sons 5. Jason Mraz 6. Death Cab for Cutie Favourite poem: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (T.S. Eliot) |
About us...
We met on Twitter in June 2012, and decided to make some writing instruction videos together, as there were very few English educators using the Flipped Class model. What started as something that was fun and productive slowly morphed into something neither of us expected:
We decided to team-teach from across the country.
Traditionally, team-teaching means one group of students and two teachers, all in the same room. That's obviously not possible for us. In fact, we've never physically been in the same room together.
However, our belief in the power of collaboration has developed into a belief that there is more than just the "traditional" definition of team-teaching. We plan our classes together. We share knowledge and resources. We help each other compensate for weak areas in our teaching practice and skill set. We create class content together, and show that learning is messy, but that we are just like our students: learners.
This cross-country collaborative partnership is something that, as far as we can tell, no one else has ever done. We made a video describing our process of creating instructional videos. However, we know that things will change as we go through this year and we continue to learn how to best meet the needs of our students, so we ask all of our students (and parents) to be patient with us as we figure this all out! We are lucky to have fantastically supportive schools that support our attempt to forge a path that no one has ever walked before.
If you have questions for us, you can contact us at [email protected] or through the contact form.
We decided to team-teach from across the country.
Traditionally, team-teaching means one group of students and two teachers, all in the same room. That's obviously not possible for us. In fact, we've never physically been in the same room together.
However, our belief in the power of collaboration has developed into a belief that there is more than just the "traditional" definition of team-teaching. We plan our classes together. We share knowledge and resources. We help each other compensate for weak areas in our teaching practice and skill set. We create class content together, and show that learning is messy, but that we are just like our students: learners.
This cross-country collaborative partnership is something that, as far as we can tell, no one else has ever done. We made a video describing our process of creating instructional videos. However, we know that things will change as we go through this year and we continue to learn how to best meet the needs of our students, so we ask all of our students (and parents) to be patient with us as we figure this all out! We are lucky to have fantastically supportive schools that support our attempt to forge a path that no one has ever walked before.
If you have questions for us, you can contact us at [email protected] or through the contact form.
