About Me, Ms. Allen
A picture of me with the Negev Desert in the background. I was able to spend a month in Israel with a group of teachers in 2022. Funded by the Fulbright Hays Scholarship.
My students know me as 'Ms. Allen'. I didn't always want to be a teacher, when I was a kid, sometimes we would play 'school' and my sister had a lot more patience and creativity with the 'students' than I did. I thought I didn't have it in me to be a teacher and wrote off that idea.
I have always loved learning though. When I got to college, I toyed with the idea of going into interior design or architecture or maybe even family studies. It was one class that changed my mind: Ancient Greece. I loved that class! I had never had a history class go so specifically into one civilization, and my professor was so very passionate about Ancient Greece. I decided that's what I wanted to do. Study History.
College-aged Ms. Allen on SUU campus- bangs from the early 2000s 😂
Thinking on that decision, I realized that majoring in History doesn't exactly prepare you for any specific kind of career. I felt like the logical choice was, teaching. So I changed my major to 'History Education' and hoped that teaching would be a good fit.
I remember when I did my Student Teaching down in Cedar City Utah at Canyon View Middle School. There was one moment that I'll never forget. I was teaching an 8th grade U.S. history class and I said 'okay, now get out your notebooks' and everyone did. It was a surreal moment for me. I told a classroom of 30 thirteen year olds to do something ... and they all did it. The power that I had. Sometimes I joke that I became a teacher because I like the power. And while that's not completely false, it's not the reason I stayed in the profession for a decade.
My first job was at a charter school in American Fork, Utah called Pioneer High School for the Performing Arts. It was a new school designed for students who wanted to be performing artists. Half of the day the students would take their dance classes, their music classes, or their theater classes, all taught by professionals in the field. The other half of the day the students took their academic classes. The school was fairly new and shared a building with an elementary school. As I taught those young performing artists, I fell in love with teaching.
I loved the challenge of finding ways to make material interesting to the students. I tried a lot of creative projects, some worked, some didn't. I loved the relationship I developed with my students. I loved being in the classroom. Designing lessons. Getting excited about the content and finding ways to engage the students and get them excited about what I was teaching.
I also learned that as a teacher, I could travel all summer. Bonus. I realized this job was exactly what I wanted.
Because the school was small, I had the opportunity to teach a lot of subjects. I created all of my own curriculum and taught: U.S. History, Geography, Government, Financial Literacy, Psychology, Sociology, and they even had me teach Health and Computer Tech. I created online courses, and in-person courses. I pursued certification in social studies so I could teach all the social studies subjects, as well as financial literacy. I was busy but I was thriving. But the school was not particularly thriving.
I have heard a lot of people say a lot of negative things about charter schools. Some are true and some aren't. They are publicly funded and the money they get is based on student enrollment. In August of 2018, just a few weeks before the new school year was about to start, I found out that there weren't enough students enrolled and they were going to shut the school down.
I was heart broken. I had put so much work into those students and that school.
I was also really stressed about finding a job weeks before the new school year was supposed to start, I didn't think anyone would be hiring.
Luckily I found a school called Freedom Preparatory Academy. Another charter school, this time in Provo and much more established than my previous school had been. Their Utah Studies / Psychology teacher had just informed them that she had decided to stay at home with her new baby instead of coming back to teach, so they had an opening!
Teaching at Freedom Prep was very different than it had been at Pioneer. The students had a dress code, they had to wear solid color shirts with a collar, only certain colors were approved. There were even rules about what color their shoelaces could be. It was very different from the artist-focused style that had been the norm at my previous school.
The school was much more diverse than I had previously experienced, and much more diverse (in terms of minority students) than one might expect to find in Utah County, Utah. I loved it. I had the opportunity to teach 7th graders for the first time. That was a challenge. I had to completely rethink and reimagine all my previously tried and true classroom management strategies. What works on an 11th grader does not work on a 7th grader.
I was able to teach; Utah Studies, Psychology (including AP and CE), Government, World History, AP World History, and an Economics course.
I have never not had a large course load. I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I taught one subject all the time. 😅
I was at this school when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
I was always a teacher that liked to use technology in the classroom, but none of us were prepared for that March when all the schools shut down. I don't need to remind anyone who was a teacher in 2020 what that year was like.
Utah schools were back in session by that fall, but we were all wearing masks and had rules about 'social distancing' that no one could follow. How can you have students sit 6 feet apart in a small classroom with 30 desks?
In 2022 I received a Fulbright Scholar Award to travel to Israel with a group of teachers from around the United States. That opportunity changed my life.
I was able to spend a month + learning and studying and immersing myself in a culture without having to worry about expenses or the other stressors of traveling. It was on that trip that I realized, even though I loved teaching, I wanted more freedom with my time. The summers weren't enough.
Fall of 2022 I started thinking about leaving the classroom. That spring I took a vacation to New Zealand and then a road trip with my sister to San Francisco, that's when I decided that I was going to leave the classroom.
Part of me thought I would teach forever. I didn't want to be one of those statistics that showed teachers all leave the classroom. I remember when I passed my 5 year milestone I felt so accomplished that I wasn't one of the 50% who leave the classroom in the first 5 years. But the truth is, there's a lot ot being a teacher that didn't suit me. You can read more about that decision on my blog.
So in 2023 I said goodbye to the traditional classroom and went out into the world of seeing what it was like not being a teacher.
Since then I got a masters in Instructional Design and Educational Technology, I build curriculum for schools and companies, I train teachers, I still teach very part time at a local care center where high school students aren't able to attend their regular school... I guess you could say I'm still figuring it out. But the truth is, I'll always be doing something related to education and learning.
I have been creating material for my students since 2013, and since I've taught so many different courses, I have a lot of material. I started listing things on Teachers Pay Teachers and realized it would take me years just to list all of the material I already have. But I want to share what I've made. I want to help make classrooms more student centered and interactive.
What I Believe About Teaching
Throughout my years in education, my perspective has shifted on what schools should do and be. Here's what I've come to believe:
-Students learn through doing. Classrooms should focus on projects and inquiry.
-A student cannot learn to their fullest potential if their needs are not met (sleeping, eating, feeling loved)
-Teachers could be so much more effective if they had the time to make learning individual, like they have significant one-on-one time with a student and time to prepare material tailored for that student
-Sometimes the most important thing you can do in your classroom has nothing to do with teaching the lesson
Why I'm Online
I want to share what I've learned and what I've created.
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