Shannon Pypa
Teach Blue Fellow
A focus on purpose is critical for meaningful instruction and learning. To help students achieve learning goals, we need to have a clear sense of the destination we have in mind and how we think we can best get there. And then we need to communicate that clearly to our students so that THEY know where we’re headed.
Problem of Practice
As a secondary Social Studies teacher, I often felt isolated in terms of my pedagogical work, even within my own department. With the support of my grade-level professional learning community, I constantly made choices about how to support the growth of my students' historical literacy. However, it often felt like I made those decisions in a vacuum, independent of the reading and writing skills that students learned before they joined my class, as well as what would be expected of them when they moved on to the next course in our content sequence. Without concerted efforts toward vertical alignment, skill-building in the history classroom thus becomes disjointed, irregular, and ultimately ineffective.
About Shannon Pypa
Shannon started her teaching career at Wayne Memorial High School back in 2001, but this summer she began transitioning out of the classroom and into her new role as an Instructional Coach for high school teachers across Wayne-Westland Community Schools.
Over the years, she has worked with students at every grade level and taught a variety of courses, from on-level Political Science, to AP U.S. History, to electives like Black History in America. Most recently she specialized in teaching U.S. History & Geography to 9th grade students. Shannon has served as a mentor teacher to student teachers from U of M and other teacher preparation programs for many years. Two years ago, she joined her building’s FAME (Formative Assessment for Michigan Educators) team in order to elevate the effectiveness of formative assessment in her classroom, and this year she will serve as a leader of this work. Shannon serves as the NHS advisor and the co-sponsor for the Class of 2026 at Wayne Memorial.
Shannon holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan and earned her teacher certification through the Marsal School of Education. She also earned her Master of Arts degree at the Marsal School of Education.
Accounts from Shannon Pypa
Vertically aligning skill work is no easy task, but by continually studying sources and thinking through the possibilities, a viable plan can emerge.
Vertically aligning skill work is no easy task, but by continually studying sources and thinking through the possibilities, a viable plan can emerge.
Social studies teachers are pretty good at considering vertical alignment in terms of content. But skills? That would likely require a much longer conversation.