Return to Headlines
TEACHER VOICE: Real-life application key to learning for Sutter Middle educator
Sutter Middle School engineering teacher Debra Krikourian was honored this summer with a competitive grant for $2,500 from the Thank a Million Teachers program, which donates funds toward educators’ classroom projects and allows students, families and others to offer public kudos to their teachers.
We sat down with Krikourian to learn more about what motivates her as a teacher and leader in education.
Q: What is your philosophy when it comes to teaching?
A: I’m more of a facilitator than a teacher. The way that I approach teaching is that students are in charge of their own learning and so my job is to show them resources where they can go find information.
What attracts students to your teaching style?
I think because I do more project-based learning, where students learn through projects. Instead of memorizing vocabulary, we actually do a project where we’re applying the vocabulary and they can see it in action so that they understand what it is. I think it’s different from lecturing and regurgitating information; it’s more important to actually apply it to real-life situations.
Describe your average day in the classroom.
I start out with whatever our project is that we’re looking at, or we go through activities. To associate problem solving, we go activity, activity, activity, project – and then a real life problem to apply it to. So a normal day is, “Okay, we’re going to practice an activity to help you solve the problem later. So I’m going to give you the tools, and I want you to come together with these certain tools and build something that can, say, hold a book.” So they have to go through a design process to do that.
Other than teaching, is there anything outside of school time to help your students?
I require my students to participate in an offsite competition. … I also have two clubs: I have a girls’ engineering club and I have a Minecraft club.
How have you used the $2,500 from Thank a Million Teachers?
We purchased headphones for the computers so that students could record information on blogs or podcasts. We also have a flight simulator unit, which culminates in flying from Mather to Lake Tahoe. They can use the headphones to talk to each other in their planes and communicate. We also bought some sheep brains for a biomedical program in which students have to figure out what disease (a hypothetical) patient has that involves the neurological system. So we do a brain dissection to learn the different parts of the brain before we go into finding out what disease this person has in order to do a biomedical research project to get research funds.
Do you have any advice for other teachers or students?
Just perseverance: never giving up. Because most of the time, whenever you’re trying to create something, it doesn’t work. And I think it’s really important for students to understand not to give up . . . that’s the main thing. Don’t give up. Find the solution. Keep trying.