Teacher Uses Grant To Address Pandemic Learning Loss

As a semi-finalist for Duval County Teacher of the Year in 2022, teacher Derya Tozoglu received a Powering Potential classroom grant, courtesy of Florida Blue and Rotary International. Teachers are free to use the grants in any way they believe will help their school communities.

Since receiving the grant, Mrs. Tozoglu was assigned a different role at River City Science Academy, taking on the responsibilities of an instructional coach to her fellow teachers. She decided to use the classroom grant to purchase a laptop that she uses when sharing student data with teachers, giving her greater flexibility to help teachers and students.

"After and during the COVID period, all students across the nation suffered from learning loss," she said. "To address the learning loss, schools started implementing various strategies. As a school, we were not the exception and were affected by the learning losses. In order to address this issue, we used strategies to provide support for the teachers inside and outside the classroom and targeted small group pullouts and push-ins for the students. I provide teachers with student data for each student and support teachers with monitoring progress and adjusting instruction based on student data. The goal is to address and close any deficiencies in learning, and intervene accordingly to improve student outcomes. Daily instruction includes grade-level content area enrichment by providing whole group, small group, and/or one-on-one targeted instruction to provide immediate corrective feedback to remedy any deficiencies."

With the laptop, she is able to provide teachers and students with data and information without time or space constraints. "Progress monitoring data, growth on internal and Florida Assessments, teacher observation and feedback on content relevance and perceived impact on student learning are to be used to measure the effectiveness of my support, and I’ll make adjustments to improve my service," said Mrs. Tozoglu.