Lori Simpson Email & Phone Number

For the last ten years, I have been a secondary English Language and Literacy Acquisition and English teacher in the Main South neighborhood of Worcester, Massachusetts working with both middle school and high school students. Working with these youth has been both a rewarding and challenging experience which has pushed me to rethink my own beliefs about pedagogical practices and taught me the value of reflection and research. During my years of teaching, I have taught sophomore, junior, and senior English, English Language and Literacy Acquisition, literacy, and AP Research. I have always been interested in cultivating practices that would increase student engagement and self-efficacy, but when I began conducting teacher-research, I realized that looking at how students used talk in academic discussions to construct meaning and develop voice was my primary area of interest. Conducting teacher-research has allowed me to investigate and expand my own beliefs around student talk and collaboration. During my time in Worcester, I have also facilitated workshops for my peers around language acquisition strategies, participated in the school’s leadership team, and supported the school in their state and federal compliance programs. I co-taught a graduate-level SIOP class through Worcester State University for the secondary ESL staff of the Worcester Public Schools. In this class, we focused on instruction in using the SIOP Model to address the academic needs of English learners. Teachers in the course learned and practiced the eight aspects of lesson design and delivery that make up the instructional features of the SIOP Model including lesson preparation, building background, comprehensible input, strategies, interaction, practice and application, lesson delivery, and review and assessment. Although the English Learner Department of the Worcester Public Schools decided to move away from implementing the full SIOP Model throughout the district, the pedagogical strategies and practices at its core still stand as relevant for the instruction of the increasingly diverse student population.

Listed skills include Differentiated and Differentiated Instruction.