About Me

Introduction:
¡Hola! I'm Jen Shaw and I'm currently in my 11th year of teaching. I teach middle school Spanish including exploratory courses for grades 6 and 7 and 8th grade Level I for high school credit.

I have a B.A. with Honors in secondary education with concentrations in English and Spanish from Albion College and an M.A in Library and Information Science from the University of South Carolina. I initially planned on teaching high school English, but found my niche teaching middle school Spanish. It's so interesting and wonderful where life takes you!

Background:
I currently teach in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but I moved around a bit before I found my home here. My teaching experiences include high school and middle school, English and Spanish, and rural, urban, and suburban districts.  I'm originally from Michigan, but my husband and I lived in Greenville, South Carolina before relocating back to Michigan to be closer family.

Methodology:
I believe in proficiency-based instruction and technology integration. I love spending time doing my own professional enrichment to keep with the current world language and Web 2.0 trends. I made the transition from traditional tests and now mostly use interim performance assessments (IPAs).  As a result of the performance assessments, my students have thrived and built up confidence as they realize can actually "do" the language.

In 2014, I started flipping lessons since I work in a large districts where I am not able to completely let go of grammar. It's incredible how well my students truly "own" the concepts they learn in the flips compared to when I used traditional lessons.  My district recently adopted Avancemos, so my 8th grade courses are built on loosely on the units and vocabulary, but with a proficiency focus; I don't use the textbook resources very often.

I am passionate about developing curriculum and varying the types of activities. I strive to bring authentic culture to life in my classroom, but within the realm of using the target language as much as possible.  As part of the proficiency-based model, I design a lot of interpersonal speaking and interpretive listening/viewing activities that have my students listening to and speaking in Spanish the majority of every class period.

About Me:
My husband and I have one daughter who is three. I love being a mom, but I also really love my job.  Before I had my daughter, I coached basketball (I played in college) and soccer, but I now focus my spare time on spending time with my family and friends. I am a Netflix binge-watcher, novice gardener, essential oil advocate, and iPhone addict. Personally, I'm a big believer that randomness is the spice of life, but I love to keep my professional world super organized.