A pair of highly regarded Idaho teachers (and IEA members) are taking part in the prestigious Master Teacher Project, which was launched jointly by the National Education Association and BetterLesson. Julia Withers of Vallivue Middle School in Caldwell and Glenda Funk of Highland High School in Pocatello were selected for the MTP following an extensive application process.
The Master Teacher Project is ambitious and rigorous. Participants are required to post a lesson plan every day—in narrative form and complete with student work samples, teacher resources, a video component, and different levels of tagging. “The goal of the project is to put other teachers in the classroom of accomplished teachers by giving them access to an entire year’s worth of unit and lesson plans with all the resources they need to teach the class using those materials,’ said Funk. “In my utopian world the MTP will open doors to other unique, paying opportunities in education.”
25 of Funk’s lesson plans are expected to be included when BetterLesson goes “live” with 50 lessons from each of the MTP teams. Funk also recently met her MTP coach, Debra Block, while attending the National Council of Teachers of English in Boston. You can read more about Glenda Funk and her work by visiting her blog.
“Being a part of the project makes me a better teacher every day, and my coach challenges me to increase the rigor of every lesson I create,” said Withers. “I’m excited to have virtual conversations with the folks who will try my lessons, and I want to see how my lesson writing translates into another teacher’s classroom and personal style.”
The two Idaho teachers will be attending a two day conference in Washington, D.C. this February to work on the project and celebrate the webpage launch.
