Good day, Island School Blog readers!  This is Katie McDougall, the Fall 2011 “Master Teacher in Residence.”  By way of introduction, I hail from Nashville, TN where I’ve been teaching English at Ensworth High School.  Before that, I taught for a decade in Colorado Springs at The Colorado Springs School and at Cheyenne Mountain High School.  The Master Teacher position at The Island School was created so that a more experienced teacher can have a presence on campus and serve as a mentor to the many young teachers.  I came into this role quite serendipitously and have found myself amazed on a daily basis at this grand and sublime adventure.  (Right now as I type, the deep orange sun is rising over the ocean outside my front porch, confirming the accuracy of the word, sublime.)

As Master Teacher, one of my charges, in addition to team-teaching with the dynamic and fabulous Lit Department, is to regularly observe classes in subjects outside my discipline, and as a byproduct, I have become a student again.  I’ve been learning more broadly than I have for many years, and in doing so, I have had the unique opportunity to experience the full range of the students’ academic adventure (minus the homework.)  Continue reading →