Category: NY

Andrea Ferrero: Equity, Entrepreneurship, and Financial Literacy

Andrea Ferrero of Pockets Change
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Who is Andrea Ferrero, and what is Pockets Change?

ANDREA FERRERO brings over a decade of experience in teaching and learning, curriculum and program development, and community capacity building together to design award winning educational programs and digital products. She holds a teaching credential in PreK-12th grade multiple subjects and two Master’s degrees in Educational Leadership and Curriculum & Instruction with Multicultural Contexts.

At Pockets Change, Andrea works with schools, organizations, and businesses to make finance fun through innovative educational approaches and meaningful ed-tech tools. She has served as a delegate to the World Innovation Summit in Qatar, the ASCD Supervision and Curriculum Development Delegation in China, the Multi-Age Learning Institute in New Zealand, and the Mozilla Open Leaders in England. Andrea is also a board member of the California Jump$tart Coalition.

⭐️ Use the timestamps below to jump to specific parts of this conversation in YouTube. ⬇️

  • 3:12 – It’s story time! Please share with us about a LOW MOMENT or an experience of adversity that you’ve faced in your teaching or education career, and describe how you overcame it.
  • 5:41 – As I mentioned off the top, you are the co-founder and executive director of POCKETS CHANGE. What is the mission and vision of your organization? How do you seek to serve schools and learners?
  • 7:52 – I’d like to focus in especially on this whole area of FINANCIAL LITERACY. Why do you think this is such a critical concern for our students today? What do you see as some of the most serious gaps in our typical high school education?
  • 12:39 – Does Pockets Change offer any ENTREPRENEURSHIP workshops or practical opportunities for small business training?
  • 14:21 – Outside of education, what’s another area of LEARNING for you? What is it that ignites your passions outside of the classroom and brings you alive as a human being? Tell us why this area interests you and why you enjoy it.
  • 15:44 – Share about one app, personal habit, PRODUCTIVITY hack that contributes to your success.

Voices and Resources That Spark Andrea’s Thinking

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Episode 126 – Andrew Canle

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Meet Andrew Canle

ANDREW CANLE is an Assistant Principal at Shaw Avenue School, a K-6 elementary campus in Valley Stream, New York, a suburban town just outside of Queens. He’s a three-time champion coach at NBA Math Hoops, a program that engages students in math and social-emotional learning through the game of basketball. He’s also the creator of the #EDUCanle podcast.

Education or Law?

Andrew recalls a time during his second year of teaching when he seriously considered leaving the field of education entirely. “I just wasn’t happy overall,” he admits, which led him to consider moving from the classroom to a career in law.

What kept him in education, he says, was his decision to revisit his core passion: helping kids and doing the work of transforming lives. So many people made that sacrifice for him, he says, and so he redoubled his commitment to teaching. Looking back, he values this crisis of calling as a time that allowed him to find himself and redefine his true values.

The EDUCanle Podcast

Andrew credits colleagues and co-workers for the inspiration to start the EDUCanle Podcast. Part of his role at Shaw Avenue is to facilitate professional development opportunities for his staff, and at some point it occurred to him that recording these events and then repurposing the content on a podcast would be a great way to allow staff members to review content or catch up on missed learning.

Publishing in podcast form also allows him to support the learning of professionals outside of his own building and expand his professional network, something that can only benefit him and his teachers. Moving forward, Andrew plans to expand his asynchronous professional development offerings by screencasting presentations and sharing these on YouTube.

On 🔥 for Formative Assessment

Formative assessment is an area that is lighting Andrew’s fire in education right now. “It’s the crux of everything,” he points out.

Checking for understanding, strategic questioning, and determination of student progress are such critical components of what teachers do in the classroom, and so much of student learning depends on these activities done well. Lately, he’s been taking a close look at the mindsets needed to ask the most effective questions of students – questions that generate the data that informs our next instructional decisions.

A Professional Goal: Improving His Writing

At the forefront of his professional goals, Andrew is looking to become a better writer. He’s now had several articles published, including one with Edutopia, but he laughs about the silent suffering of perfectionism that remains a constant challenge. He talks about making his writing process more fluid and simply going with the flow of his ideas, steps that will make his writing more powerful and accelerate his productivity at the same time.

Personal Passions: Psychology, Sociology, and Sports

Passions that bring Andrew alive as a human being outside of his professional context include the studies of psychology and sociology. “They absolutely fascinate me,” Andrew says, and some of the learning he does in these spaces also equips him to be a more effective administrator. “You can never have enough tools in the toolbelt.”

Andrew is also a big sports fan and points to the legacies of dynasty teams like the New York Yankees and the New England Patriots as examples that our educational institutions can learn from. 

Andrew’s Productivity Hack: A Little Blue Notebook

The engine that keeps Andrew on track and productive is a small blue notebook that he keeps in his inside pocket. That notebook is where he tracks to-do lists, items of concern, future tweets, and random notes. While others turn to cloud note-taking services, he likes to keep things analog.

Voices That Spark His Thinking and Ignite His Practice

Over on Twitter, Andrew recommends following @MrDataGuy, an important voice on the subject of assessment: traditional, PLC, and student ownership. His graphics are incredible and Andrew says they have supported many of his professional learning events.

One of Andrew’s favorite edtech tools is Review360, an application from Pearson that helps education leaders track student behavior patterns and support student learning based on situational trends.

When asked for a book pick, Andrew turns to Teach Like a Champion 2.0: 62 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College by Doug Lemov. Follow Doug on Twitter @Doug_Lemov. 

Andrew’s YouTube pick is a channel called Vsauce, which answers all kinds of interesting scientific and philosophical questions about the world around us. Follow the creator on Twitter @TweetSauce. 

And when he’s got the time to relax or just needs a good laugh, Andrew is turning to comedian James Acaster on Netflix. 

We sign off on this fun conversation, and Andrew gives us the best ways to contact and follow him online. See below for details!

Follow Andrew

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Song Track Credits

  • Bluntedsesh4 (by Tha Silent Partner, courtesy of FreeMusicArchive.org)
  • Sunrise Drive by South London Hifi*
  • Anthem by The Grand Affair*

*courtesy of the YouTube Audio Library

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Episode 114 – Julianne Ross-Kleinmann

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114 - Julianne Kleinmann3.png

Meet Julianne Ross-Kleinmann

JULIANNE ROSS-KLEINMANN is passionate about the power of instructional technology to support teaching and learning, sharing what she’s learned with others, and community service — her focus for over 30 years as a member of Delta Sigma Theta Inc.

Julianne formally started teaching technology in the 1990s, and she became an ISTE member soon after. She’s a frequent presenter at conferences and schools on topics including technology applications, integration and troubleshooting, rubrics and assessment, STEM, makerspaces and room design. Her favorite presentations have involved co-presenting with her students on topics relating to computational thinking using the Scratch and Scratch Jr. programming languages.

Julianne is currently an Instructional Specialist for the Ulster County Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) in New Paltz, New York. She is an Iste Certified Educator, Apple Teacher, Certified BrainPOP Educator (CBE), Google Level I Certified Educator, ISTE Mobile Learning Network 2017 Excellence Award Winner and past chair of the ISTE STEM Professional Learning Network (PLN), and currently serves on the ISTE Board of Directors. 

“First and foremost, I’m a teacher,” Juli says. “I’m a teacher, a learner, and a service leader. I like to help others lead toward success. For me, it’s really important that the student surpasses the teacher.”

Fighting the Doubts

Juli can say she’s never been “run out of town” in a professional sense, but she’s certainly left a few contexts where she felt like it was just not the right fit. She’s worked in some isolating circumstances, including those where she has been the only female, the only female of color, or the only female who was more academically centered versus IT centered, and in some of those contexts she’s been met with stiff pushback.

Pushback and resistance can make us question ourselves, she says. We can start to feel like failures because our views are not well-received and don’t fit with the status quo. It’s in those low moments that Juli has leaned heavily on her always-supportive husband and positive professional learning network to provide the encouragement, confidence, and affirmation that she needed.

Her Path and Passion for STEM Education

She actually didn’t intend to become a teacher in the beginning, Juli laughs, and she wasn’t always interested in STEM or technology. But when Simon Helton asked Juli to support the Math and Science network at ISTE, she accepted. She began building professional relationships immediately and has served in this role with ISTE ever since. Today, the ISTE STEM Network provides collaboration, professional development, and support for STEM teachers and leaders around the world, and Juli has been a proud part of its ongoing development.

STEM education is all about computational thinking, problem-solving, project-based learning, and real-world design. There are so many applications and expressions of STEM, and the list is growing all the time. Looking at the great inventions and innovations of the past gives us vision and clarity regarding directions for the future. Even a revolutionary social figure like Harriet Tubman modeled the STEM spirit through systems thinking, empathy, and proactive problem-solving.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEM Education

Diversity, equity, and inclusion have become focus points for the ISTE STEM PLN. One of the ways ISTE is working towards greater equity is to promote scholarships and programs that fund minority representation in ISTE’s speakers and conference attendees. ISTE is also piloting an Equity Action Forum that gave educators a place and space to unpack big issues in this area of equity with a focus on action. And Juli has contributed to the development of another ISTE initiative called Growing ME: Bridging the equity gap through mentorship. 

Other Points of Professional Passion

One of the things that has really ignited Juli’s passion for the ISTE educator certification process is the journey of becoming a blended, reflective education leader herself. She’s also passionate about SEL in education. Perhaps it’s nothing new, but she still loves the fact that social-emotional learning is such a focus in schools today.

Bringing Scratch and Robotics to the Mid-Hudson Valley

One of Juli’s professional goals in 2020 is the prospect of bringing a Scratch Day event into the mid-Hudson Valley. She’s also interested in robotics comptetitions, Vex events, AI and other blended learning opportunities. She sees educators traveling great distances to take part in these sorts of events and would love to host some closer to home.

Other Personal Passions That Bring Juli Alive 

Ever since she was a child, Juli has enjoyed baking cakes with her mother and legendary aunt. She’s taken some baking courses and loves to watch baking shows. She’s also a big fan of motorcycle riding and looks forward to getting back on the iron horse and riding through the Hudson Valley in 2020.

Productivity from the Professional Learning Network 

Juli’s productivity hack is her professional colleagues and support network. “I need to surround myself with people who have gone through what I’ve gone through, people who are kind and can sympathize, and also people who have nothing to do with education and bring a fresh set of eyes to situations.” These people are like family, she says.

Voices and Resources That Inspire Her Practice 

Over on Twitter, Juli recommends following @ISTESTEM to connect with an uplifting group of educators passionate about STEM education.

Asked to point to an edtech tool, Juli enthusiastically boosts Scratch and Scratch Junior, the simple but powerful coding languages developed at MIT to help younger learners build computational thinking skills.

learning-first-technology-second.jpgJuli’s book pick is Learning First, Technology Second: The Educator’s Guide to Designing Authentic Lessons by Liz Kolb, a profound look and essential starting point for educators looking to do more with technology in their classrooms.

Based on encouragement from Jorges Valenzuela, Juli has tuned in to the STEM Everyday Podcast hosted by Chris Woods, another former guest of the show. Follow Chris and get to know his show @DailySTEM. 

When she finds the time to put up her feet, Juli’s latest picks on Netflix have included Vantage Point and a modern classic, Stranger Things. 

We sign off on this inspiring conversation, and Juli reminds us to connect with her on Twitter @JBR_Kleinmann.

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Episode 58 – Michael Drezek

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58 - Michael Drezek

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MICHAEL DREZEK is a Technology Integration Specialist for the Lake Shore Central School District in upstate New York. Michael is in his 15th year as an educator and is the host of the Quest 4 Edlightenment podcast. He is a former teacher of the year and has earned too many accolades to list here! Find out more about Michael’s innovative work with technology in education at https://michaeldrezek.com/.

Follow Michael online here:

In our conversation, Michael recalls the mistake he once made of putting content above relationships with students, and he talks about how he would do things differently today. He defines his professional goal for this school year, explains why he is so passionate about the state of education today, and shares what makes him productive in so many different domains of service. Michael gives us some great recommendations on Twitter, books, edtech, and more!

Find the highlights from our conversation at the timestamps below:

  • 1:21 – Michael is the District Technology Integrator for the Lakeshore Central School District in Angola, New York, just outside of Buffalo. This is his fifth year at this position. Previously, he taught middle school math for ten years before completing his Masters in Education Technology, which led him to his current post.
  • 2:06 – In terms of a low point in his career, Michael recalls the mistake of putting content over relationships with students. Looking back, one practical area he wishes he had focused on more was student voice — offering more ways for students to express themselves through podcasts, video reflections, and other means of creative expression.
  • 4:47 – Michael enjoys the reach of influence for positive change and innovation that comes with his position. As a classroom teacher, he could influence the learning of his own students. But as a technology integrator who works with 250 teachers, he’s able to advance learning for so many more. The question he likes to ask is “How can we use technology to empower students and get them creating and sharing — not just with classmates but with classrooms around the world?”
  • 8:58 – His professional goal is to find a way to meet with every single teacher in the school district. He wants to make sure every teacher feels included and connected and doesn’t want to let any teacher slip through the cracks. Not only that, he looks at those meetings as valuable learning opportunities for him to better understand teacher needs.
  • 11:07 – Something Michael’s been thinking a lot about is the area of digital wellness, particularly as it relates to his own children. How can we teach our kids not only to manage technology well but to use it for good?
  • 13:20 – For Michael, it just comes down to work ethic — something he picked up from his days in college sports. Teachers, he says, give so much on a daily basis. The least he can do is match their effort and investment.
  • 14:28 – On Twitter, Michael recommends following @Dwight_Carter.
  • 15:19 – An edtech tool that Michael’s seeing a lot of value in is Buncee, a creation and communication tool that empowers student voice and choice. Find out more about Buncee by following them on Twitter @Buncee.
  • 17:22 – Michael’s book recommendation is Social LEADia: Moving Students from Digital Citizenship to Digital Leadership by Jennifer Casa-Todd. Follow the author on Twitter @JCasaTodd.
  • 18:29 – His podcast recommendation is the great Matt Miller’s Ditch That Textbook podcast. Michael enjoys the episodes because they’re short, they usually give him something he can apply immediately, and Matt always leaves him with something to think about. Follow @DitchThatTxtbk on Twitter to find out more about what Matt is all about.
  • 19:54 – On YouTube, Michael finds the most value at TED Talks. Follow @TEDTalks on Twitter at @TEDTalks.
  • 20:48 – When he’s got no energy left in his day for anything productive, Michael’s watching The Walking Dead on Netflix.
  • 21:35 – We sign off on the conversation, and Michael shares the best ways to follow him online. See above for details!

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Song Track Credits

  • Intro: Relax (by Simon More)
  • Outtro: Starley – Call on Me Remix (by DJ Zhorik)

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