What’s Right With Our Schools – Fund 4 Dunavin

Getting to travel overseas and learn new ideas for teaching students is some teachers’ dream come true. One Hamilton County educator recently got to do just that.

Keely Dunavin, 2nd Grade Teacher, Thrasher Elementary School, “I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. I went through a really good program at UTK. And one of my favorite things to study was, behavior and emotional intelligence.”

“Coming in to my classroom as a teacher I wanted to have a classroom that encourages their mutual respect. Creating a community, a community of learners.”

“I learned about Fund for Teachers through… I believe it was a county wide email sent out. I really love how you create your own professional development based on what interests you the most.”

“So we went to Ireland and took a course. And the point of the course is to learn and collaborate with other teachers, other professionals, in order to bring back information about this social, emotional learning to your classroom. We learned a lot of different strategies for teaching social, emotional learning through the other teachers that were there. We had a lot of teachers from Greece, a teacher from Slovenia, Hungary and Spain, I believe. And they all had a lot of these different strategies that they use to create an environment in their classroom that fosters respect and community. I’m really excited to bring back what we’ve learned about different behavioral theories. Our instructor was a psychologist, and so he had a lot of information about the newest theories with behavior. We learned a lot about change theory and just how we can adjust as teachers to help the students in our classroom. It’s something that I was very interested in, and Iwas very grateful, and I’m still very grateful that I was able to write something and get the funding to go and experience this opportunity and learn from other teachers from around the world, because I think that was the most valuable experience that I got through this.”