[UPDATE: Kellie Mullin is now a Head of School in the Bay Area]

Kellie Mullin is our guest today and she teaches 7th and 8th grade science.  She does an amazing class project called the 20% Project.  The students find a real-world problem and develop possible solutions using the Design Thinking process.

We talk about the challenge of teaching Empathy as part of the Design Thinking process with middle school students–in particular the 7th and 8th grade girls.

Kellie shares her best tech tips and advice that helps develop the creative confidence and growth mindset of teachers.

Share and like this episode and let us know what you think!

Transcript

[Welcome to the Teaching Bites Podcast. Here are your hosts, Fred and Sharon Jaravata.]

Fred Jaravata: This is the Teaching Bites Show where we connect you with people and ideas to take your teaching to the next level. I’m your host Fred Jaravata and today, we are featuring a special guest here on the show and her name is Kellie Mullin. She is a seventh and eighth grade science teacher and I worked with her for the past few years. I think – how many years is this?

Kellie Mullin: This is my sixth year.

Fred Jaravata: This is her sixth year, right, and we are glad to have you here to share your story so that we can inspire other teachers as well. OK. So real quick, I’ve been working with – I’ve known Kelly for the past six years and I’ve also worked closely with her with something called the 20 Percent Project and actually we’re going to be starting that real soon. I think this week and that’s going to be exciting and she’s going to share her story about that.

Also I know she’s getting – going back to school at the University of San Francisco and she will be sharing a little bit of that also and Kellie, welcome to the show.

Kellie Mullin: Thank you for having me.

Fred Jaravata: Great to have you. OK, Kellie. So I gave you a little quick intro and that was a really quick intro. We want to hear you fill in all the gaps that I skipped and tell us your origin story.

Kellie Mullin: So my father was a teacher, but he didn’t teach for most of my life. He actually had a landscaping business and when I was 16, he went back to school, got his specialist credential to teach special education and it was really inspired by the type of lifelong learner that he was. So I think that although I had watched my dad always read and see those things, I had a perfect model of what it meant to be a learner.

So I always loved school. I loved reading and helping people. So when I went to Berkeley, I was able to do some tutoring. I worked with a disabled students program and I was able to take notes. So I just had a love of education. So when it came to what do you do after college, I found that passion and I went back to Berkeley and I got my master’s and my credential there in developmental teacher education. So my passion for education really started at home.

Fred Jaravata: Nice. OK, yeah, it’s very – like you, I come from a family of teachers and definitely it’s an inspiration. All right, Kellie. So what was the “aha” moment that you had, that you realized that teaching was for you?

Kellie Mullin: I think that it took me a while to get into the rhythm of teaching. But when I did, I realized that I loved teaching because it’s so relational. For me, one moment, my first year at teaching in public school, I taught sixth grade math and science. I had a student come in to me before school started and the students were not supposed to come in. But she was really concerned that she was unsafe on the schoolyard.

So that moment of realizing that although I taught her math and science, she felt comfortable enough to come in to me and to use that space just to feel safe. It was this moment of recognition that I was making a connection with her. So that was this moment.