Polly Sue Poppy

I AM NOT A TEACHER, BUT AN AWAKENER ~ Robert Frost

Welcome to Polly Sue Poppy: a team-thriving, line-blurring, design-thinking, multi-dimensional, student-dazzling educator.

My cure is a 360° perspective on teaching and learning. My cure is passion for literature, teenagers, and education. My cure is a work ethic that doesn’t quit at 3:00. My cure is a commitment to grow and change because school should be just as transformative for teachers as it is for students. My cure is the understanding that sometimes the best learning happens on a basketball court, or in a high school auditorium, or at the lunch table and not just in the classroom. My cure is casting a critical eye on our practice and looking first to students for inspiration. My cure is a constant state of struggle to improve. I am a performer above all else.

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Years experience

Years as a literary specialist

Degree perspective on teaching and learning

Classroom hours

20+ YEARS EXPERIENCE

I have been fortunate enough to work with students in a variety of settings – I have been a reading intervention specialist, a special education tutor, a literacy coach, an instructional coach, and a classroom teacher in both public and private schools, including Montessori. I have engaged with students at every grade level from K-12. I am an education junkie, passionate about this craft.

PROJECT BASED LEARNING

This is a new package for an old idea. Students are curious by nature, and want to know why and how things work. Every content area can be driven by a guided question. Let me help you deconstruct a typical instructional unit to build a powerful PBL.

WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM

Between texting & Twitter, your students are writing over 2000 words a day about topics of interest to them. The best way to measure how well a student is grasping a subject is to let them talk about it. Let me help you use writing to help your students find their voices in every content area.

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COMMON CORE AT WORK

Standards driven education is not a new idea – Horace Mann promoted this concept in 1838. What is new is how those standards are integrated across content areas and aligned vertically within grade levels. The standards are designed to achieve deep literacy. Let me show you how to unpack those standards to foster greater student achievement in the classroom and greater success on high stakes testing.

ADOLESCENT LITERACY

The most recent results from reading tests of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show girls outscoring boys at every grade level and age examined. Let me show you how to eliminate that achievement gap.

TEACHER BASED TEAMS

Together wE Achieve More (TEAM) is the only way for students to access the standards and improve scores on high stakes tests. Teachers need to be collaborating, co-teaching, and sharing content across the curriculum. Teacher based teams foster greater student achievement. I can help you get out of your classroom to develop a collaborative culture in your building.

EXPLORE

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“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes” ~ Marcel Proust

Great teaching doesn’t just need a new policy, program, or prescription. Great teaching requires a new perspective. See how my 360° perspective can work for you.

MY LESSON PLANS

POPPY'S SEEDS

Grammar, lesson plans, the state of education…yeah, I have opinions about them all. Whether you agree with me or not, let’s have a discussion and learn from each other.