Teacher Feature: Shelby Otis

Shelby Otis is a relatively new teacher. A graduate of Nazareth College in Rochester, New York, she currently teaches in the Rochester City School District (RCSD) at School #20. Though starting out teaching sixth grade, she’s now in her first year of teaching kindergarten in a 12-1-1 special education classroom.

She originally majored in social work, but discovered a passion for RCSD through a program called Partners for Learning and switched to education. Though new to teaching full time, there are several things that she does in her classroom that she says incorporates Social-Emotional learning into day-to-day classroom activity.

“Social-emotional learning is continuous and essential for all other forms of learning,” says Otis. “Through this students learn basic life skills and social skills, [and] they learn how to identify, manage and cope with emotions.” She added that as a kindergarten special education teacher, she couldn’t get through the day without this. For example, she says her ‘time out’ area has “posters with various emotion pictures, a reflection poster, and a set dialogue through which we talk with our students and support them as they work through their emotions.”

Otis also says that she constantly offers choices in her classroom when it comes to assignments and even seating, and added that she feels that “any good teacher should do this.” She’s observed that many of her students react and are more engaged with movement and hands-on activities- which helps them grasp information more easily.

“Offering choices gives students ownership of their education, and engages them. If we can adjust and individualize our teaching as much as possible, we will be more successful in reaching more students with diverse needs and backgrounds,” she adds.

So how does a teacher gage whether or not these methods are successful? For Otis, she says she either uses a formative or summative assessment, or can also tell through mere observation of students. “Every lesson should have some sort of assessment built into it ideally. It could be as simple as one question on an exit ticket,” she explains.

She also notes that being self-critical and aware as a teacher helps her continue to track classroom progress; reflecting allows her to discover which methods were most successful, and to ensure she can continue her role as educator in the most effective way possible.