Spotlight 4 Success
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Spotlight 4 Success
The Art of Fostering Confident Communicators
What happens when you blend creativity with education? Join us for an inspiring episode featuring Sonji Walsh, a seasoned media center specialist from DeKalb County Schools with an impressive 23-year career in teaching. Sonji's journey includes an international stint in Abu Dhabi where she perfected her approach to bridging language gaps using visuals and repetition. Now, these innovative strategies are vital tools in her role supporting lower readers. Unveiling her creative flair, Sonji shares her unique twist on teaching folktales, turning a traditional lesson into an engaging Netflix-style project. Her excitement for technology and AI shines, especially in her pursuit to incorporate stop-motion animation in reading activities.
Okay, just make yourself at home, you'll be fine, sanji. All right, all right, all right, here we go. So we'll start the countdown now. Five, four, three, two, one Welcome to Spotlight for Success at the Georgia Educational Technology Conference in Atlanta, georgia. We are here. American Book Company, I'm Devin Pintosi, your host. I am here with Sanji Walsh from DeKalb County Schools as a media center specialist.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:All right, Sanji, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2:Um well, I am an educator at heart. This is my 23rd year in education. An educator at heart this is my 23rd year in education. I spent most of it as an English teacher. I've taught in a lot of different counties, in Atlanta. I went overseas to Abu Dhabi. I taught for two years, wow and I've always been an ELA teacher ELA reading. I love that, that's my heart. And then, after the pandemic, I started to get a little antsy and wanted a difference and I loved the creativity that I saw of helping kids grow and read and express themselves through writing and literature. So it just seemed like the next logical move for me to make.
Speaker 1:Gosh, that is wonderful. Tell us a little bit about that teaching experience in Abu Dhabi.
Speaker 2:It was really eye-opening. I had traveled before, but that was the first time I lived abroad for two years, so it was a culture shock for me, because you kind of get told that the kids have a higher level of English acquisition that they do, and then when you get there as a teacher you realize oh, there are only two kids in this class that speak English.
Speaker 2:Wow and everyone else speaks Arabic. But it sort of threw me into the role of being an ESOL teacher on the spot. So I had to learn all these skills of how to use visuals to teach and how to use cues and, you know, kind of having the kids that could teach English, help me and repetition. So my kids grew a lot and they did. Their English was not fluent by the end of the year, but like they could communicate basic sentences more so than they could, you know they also taught me Arabic. But it was just a really interesting experience, like the people are lovely, the culture is lovely and I had a great time traveling, but it was just a lot of learning on the spot.
Speaker 1:Oh, I bet. A lot of learning on the spot. That is amazing, and so you were able to bring some of that into your next role within DeKalb County Schools.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely, because we have an ESOL population, but a lot of the strategies that I use with those kids it's also very helpful for your lower readers. So it's some of the same strategies, whether English is their second language or whether it's difficult to read and stuff. It's a lot of it just blended together. So that was I used that to help, like, build and lift some of my lower reading kids and also to sort of give some of the teachers I've worked with, like hey, when no one spoke English, this is actually what helped them understand a passage. So it's a lot easier because these kids speak English, but it's the same like I have difficulty understanding what this says.
Speaker 1:That is amazing how you're able to bring in those those skills as a media center specialist. What drew you to media center? Specialist learning tools, sort of thing to facilitate students and educators.
Speaker 2:It was the creative ability that you have to basically shape each day to collaborate with teachers, and so, for example, I have a wonderful ELA teacher that I work with. And so, for example, I have a wonderful ela teacher that I work with and he was doing a lesson on folktales from different countries, and I was just like, oh well, a great product that I just saw online was like this netflix template, and I was just like so the kids can take their folktale from their country and turn it into a Netflix episode, like a layout I wanted to make the movie, but it was like we didn't have enough time for that, so he was teaching plot.
Speaker 2:So each element of plot turned into an episode. On Netflix, if you were to look at a show, it's like episode one, episode two, so they had to describe it and the kids were so into it and then we had where they could show it off and they displayed it. I mean like they thought that they were like on Netflix for real, but just like stuff like that where it's like we can take something mundane and turn it into a creative product that's highly engaging, and so I have the ability and the freedom to do that, and then I get to work with different people. So that's part of what I love, in addition to getting kids to read. But the technology portion where I can come in and say, hey, I think this might make this fun for the kids, and they can come in and I can help, that's what I love.
Speaker 1:Gosh, that's wonderful, sanji. So now, here we are at the Georgia ETC, and what kind of things are you learning here that you'd like to take back?
Speaker 2:So I definitely want to learn more creative product tools. So I'm into AI, I'm dabbling creative product tools, I'm into AI, I'm dabbling, but I need help, I need to learn more. So I'm going to a lot of the sessions. I just came from a stop motion animation session, which was really cool, so I'm going to go look at her slide and kind of play with it to see, because she used her videos that the kids made as a response to reading and I was like that would be a really great tool to use with my middle school kids and different teachers to be like, hey, if you're doing a novel study, they can create this stop-motion movie to kind of highlight the plot of the book or their favorite parts.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, that's really nice. And uh, are you seeing um things dealing with ai?
Speaker 2:uh, ai applications you're using I, I'm seeing that more uh it, it's definitely um, it's expanding kids' interpretations, so I kind of they're sort of using it to get around doing stuff that they should learn how to do.
Speaker 2:So, I'm trying to show them how to use it as a tool to be more creative with the things that you want to say, or you want to write, or you want to express more, so of hey, I. Or you want to write, or you want to express More, so of hey, I don't want to write this paper. This can write a paper for me. It's like well, it has more of a function. We can use it in different ways. So try to show them the creative ways to make things to replace having to talk or write a paper, et cetera. You can use this.
Speaker 1:That's wonderful. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the group regarding things whatever you'd like to share with the educational technology community?
Speaker 2:This is a wonderful experience. This is my first time here, so I'm just I'm really frustrated because a lot of the things I want to go to are all at the same time, so I just have to pick. So hopefully I can come here next year. But it's just great to be around people who want to just inspire kids, make learning interesting, make learning fun. When I was growing up, education I was always a good student, but I didn't have fun with it, and there's so many tools now where you can have fun with learning and that's what I want to bring to the kids. So that's what this experience here has been for me like how to bring fun into education.
Speaker 1:That is wonderful. That's a great thing and get more student engagement. Yeah, that's wonderful. You can see the. Do you have a touchstone story about maybe a student's life that was transformed through what you're doing?
Speaker 2:Not as the media specialist.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yes, previously.
Speaker 2:But, definitely as an ELA teacher I had a student that never, when I got the student, the student did not speak at all. I was the ELA teacher, but the student was fine. There was no disability, there was nothing like that. It was just not comfortable speaking but wrote beautifully and would speak to me alone when no students were there. So I would always praise her work and, sort of you know, give her feedback on stuff because she would talk to me, but it would be when no one is in the classroom and I would ask her if I could read some of her work, if we're talking about different things. And I thought she did a great job mastering this skill and by spring semester it was before testing she actually read something that I complimented her on in front of the class.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And that was a huge deal for me because we went from I don't speak at all when people are around to I'm reading my work in front of the class. But the kids were so great they applauded her because she spoke in front of them and it was really good.
Speaker 2:So I think she started to become a little more comfortable socially after that. But yeah, I didn't say anything because kids don't like pointing stuff out, but that was a really touching moment for me, wow, that she felt comfortable enough and safe enough and I created a positive enough environment for her to just blossom at her own pace.
Speaker 1:That is wonderful.
Speaker 2:That's one of my standout stories. I remember.
Speaker 1:Well, Sanji, thank you so much for being part of this podcast that we're focusing on success the Spotlight for Success by American Book Company. We really appreciate you being here. I appreciate everything you've shared with us and things that you're taking away here, and hope you have a great rest of the conference.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, thank you.