Kayla Carew's Teaching Portfolio

The second YA novel that my PLC group read was  Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli, the novel that the new major motion picture Love, Simon  was based off of. In the novel, 16-year-old drama-loving Simon Spier explores his sexual identity as he works up the courage to come out to his friends and family. Only two people know that Simon is gay. The first person to find out is Blue, an anonymous classmate who has been corresponding with Simon via email since the summer. Blue is also gay and has yet to come out. The two talk using nicknames in order to maintain their identities. As Simon's feelings for Blue become real, he has to decide whether or not this relationship is worth the potential hardships.  The second person to find out about Simon's sexuality is Martin, a fellow drama-lover and the grade's class clown. Unlike Blue, Martin knows Simon's identity. He uses Simon's secret as blackmail in order to force Simon into being his wingman. Wil...

In my adolescent development class, we were assigned a weekly placement in a neighboring school. Different students in the class have different roles in each of the schools they visit. I have been paired up with a 16-year-old girl named Binsa from Nepal (note that I have changed her name for privacy and confidentiality). Binsa came to the United States in 2015 and is in the beginning levels for speaking, listening, reading, and writing English. Nepal is a Himalayan country in South Asia landlocked between China and India with the rough population of 27,474,000. The official language is Nepali and it's spoken by 44.6% of the population. Hindu is the predominant religion in Nepal with 81.3% of the population practicing. Nepal was closed to the outside world until the 1950s. It is one of the world's poorest countries with the bulk of the economy relying on tourism and aid from other countries. In April of 2015, a devastating earthquake hit, killing thousands of people, des...

Video Summary: The speaker of the TED Talk on failure works for X- The Moon Shot Factory. At X, the goal is to uncover a huge problem, think of a radical solution, and then try to prove that you’re wrong. If you do the hardest parts first, it will keep you from hitting a dead end farther down the road. Discovering problems in a project sometimes puts in on a better path. For example, one team at X was working on a car that was almost in complete control and would only turn the power steering on if something went wrong. When the feedback came that this was a terrible idea, for drivers weren’t paying attention like they should have been, the team shifted their perspective and began working on a car that is in complete control. Screenshot from the video showing X’s thought process for projects Employees at X are rewarded and promoted if their idea fails in order for them to feel safe in failing. This idea stemmed from the consensus of being uncomfortable with working on risky...