Stephanie Minor: ExploreLearning Educator of the Month

Stephanie Minor is in her tenth year of teaching. She has a B.Sc. in Geology and worked in both mining and oil exploration before getting her B.Ed. She is now teaching at the brand new DSBN Academy, an Ontario public school geared toward empowering students to become the first in their families to graduate from a post-secondary institution.

Ms. Minor has been using both math and science Gizmos for three years. When she can't get time for her students to use them in the computer lab, she presents them herself both to introduce and to reinforce concepts. For example, she uses the Density Gizmo as a highly effective intermediate step between a class lesson on buoyant force and a design challenge where students design a boat to float the largest load.

Last year, she also started using Reflex in grade 2 and in grades 5-8. She notes that even her eighth graders have had a lot of trouble with math facts but were of course too embarrassed to admit it. When she would approach the problem, she found they were "not inclined to do the awful, boring flash card type activities." With Reflex, however, she saw a real difference.

"Many problems were not ones of understanding grade 8 concepts, but rather errors resulting from incorrect math facts, or slow processing because of a lack of math fact fluency. Reflex definitely helped improve the students' confidence in math."

Stephanie has been part of the DSBN Academy design team for almost two years. While reviewing students' applications she came to realize that math was going to be a major focus area. Specifically, she noted that she would need help building their confidence in mathematics, and she thinks Reflex is the right tool to build that confidence. Ms. Minor has worked hard to ensure Reflex will be available for DSBN Academy teachers.