Madeline Penn Email and Phone Number

As part of the First-Year Experience team, I coordinated and led programs that support all first-year undergraduate students–including transfer students–on UT's campus. This included researching, planning, managing, and producing the Herbert Family University Lecture Series for Signature Courses (part of UT's core curriculum). Additionally, I taught UT faculty in professional development focused on pedagogy for wellbeing for UT’s SHIFT program, both in one-on-one workshops and group workshops in partnership with the Center for Teaching and Learning and Texas-Wellbeing. UT Austin’s SHIFT initiative aims to make student wellness, with an emphasis on mindful substance use, central to faculty’s teaching amongst other areas on campus. I worked with faculty to workshop how they can authentically incorporate protective factors into their pedagogy. Finally, I taught an undergraduate course on mentorship for our first-year and transfer-year interest groups (FIGs and TrIGs) in the spring.

I worked to cultivate relationships and differentiate instruction to meet the array of needs of heterogeneous students in my classroom. As part of the first social studies co-teaching team in Cliff Valley's current middle grades program, I created curriculum, planned, and implemented said curriculum while monitoring student progress. Each year I planned and organized logistics for guest speakers and facilitated a yearly community panel for students. I collaborated closely with both a co-teacher and the 7th and 8th-grade team, in addition to building rapport with parents throughout the year to communicate student successes and learning needs. Additionally, I developed a framework for our advisory program, and I mentored a 10-12 student advisory each year that provided one-on-one and group coaching with a focus on developing executive functioning skills and reflection on areas of confidence and areas of growth. Finally, I successfully taught fully remote and in a hybrid format during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and can implement synchronous and asynchronous instructional design.

I developed a partnership with Friends of Refugees, a Clarkston-based non-profit organization, by cultivating a relationship with the Director of Volunteer Engagement and facilitating volunteer training for students each year. Throughout the school year I manage logistical components for bi-monthly service opportunities for 7th and 8th-grade students to help elementary school students in Clarkston’s refugee community with homework, reading, and active play.

I wrote and received a grant from National Geographic to create an inquiry curriculum for middle school students about education, empathy, and global citizenship in partnership with the Georgia non-profit Children Inspiring Hope. CIH facilitates connections between students in the United States and Ghana and also contributed to community development in terms of access to water, organic produce, and education in Ghana. I continue to partner with CIH each school year.

I helped facilitate and teach playwriting, character development, and staging to empower teen girls who have been touched by the Juvenile Justice system or who are refugees learning English.