Podcast480: Pedagogy Matters with Shelly Fryer

Welcome to the first of a new podcast interview series I'm titling, "Pedagogy Matters." This episode, recorded on May 30, 2022, features the pedagogy of my wife, Shelly Fryer, which I would summarize as "A Pedagogy of Computational Thinking: Constructionism, Coding, Robotics, Play, and Student Choice." Shelly started her journey as a classroom teacher in 1987 after she graduated from the College of Education at Texas Tech University. In addition to teaching in several Title 1 elementary schools in Lubbock ISD, Texas, Shelly taught for the U.S. Department of Defense in Germany for 3 years. After staying home with our children for several years, Shelly served as the Director of PreSchool Ministries at our church in Edmond, Oklahoma, and returned to the classroom in 2013 to teach 3rd, 4th and 5th grades at Positive Tomorrows in Oklahoma City for four years, which is Oklahoma's only school exclusively serving homeless children and their families. In 2017, Shelly moved to Casady School, where she taught for the past five years, starting in Language Arts for two years and then teaching STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.) As Shelly shares in the interview, when she came back to the classroom in 2013, she moved into an iPad 1:1 student learning environment, and "jumped in with both feet" learning to teach with twenty-first century digital tools for student engagement, creativity, and assessment. We specifically key in on a culminating unit Shelly taught the past couple years on biomimicry using robotics and coding activities. Also, we explore how Shelly's understanding of computational thinking, maker education, the "constructionism" of Seymour Papert, and using technology tools to empower students to "show what they know with media" have become essential elements of her personal pedagogy as a classroom teacher and designer of durable learning experiences for students. Check out the show notes for this episode (480) on speedofcreativity.org for links to the resources and technology tools mentioned in this podcast interview, and for ways to reach out to Shelly with questions and feedback. Pedagogy matters! Many thanks to Shelly Fryer (www.shellyfryer.com) for sharing her passion for teaching, for students, for engaging lessons, and equipping both teachers and students with the skills and dispositions needed to succeed and thrive in our rapidly changing environment of the twenty-first century.