Συνοδία (sunodia) is an ancient Greek word that describes a journey that one takes with companions. My goal in working with educators is to foster growth and innovation in the areas of instructional practice and curriculum development by offering meaningful learning opportunities and sustained support during implementation.
A passion for supporting teachers as they grow
I am a veteran educator with over fifteen years of experience in both teaching and teacher leadership in K-12 schools. I am committed to partnering with schools to support teachers in their professional growth. I believe that professional growth opportunities must be individualized and tailored to meet a school’s needs. To this end, I value working with school’s to provide meaningful learning opportunities for teachers and sustained support throughout the implementation process.
In my own teaching, my goal has always been to plan and deliver rigorous and engaging lessons. I have been able to lean on my strong foundations in backward curricular planning, differentiation, and cooperative learning to ensure that my curriculum and instruction are effective.
I am a Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching awardee and spent the first 6 months of 2016 in the Netherlands conducting a research project. This award offered me the opportunity to think about professional growth in news ways.
I founded Sunodia Educational Consulting to share my passion for teaching with my fellow educators by providing creative, tailored, and patient professional development services. I earned my teaching credential from Santa Clara University, my master’s degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and my bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Los Angeles.
I value opportunities to work collaboratively with school leadership to address the specific needs of the community.
Strategic planning and support of new coaching programs. Additionally, individualized mentoring of teachers through a coaching cycle of reflection, goal setting, learning, and implementation. Coaching can be done in-person or virtually.
Guide teachers in the development of curricular units using the backward design process. Meet with groups of teachers at the team or department level to facilitate the curriculum writing process.
Classroom centered technology training delivered in context to increase teachers confidence with and creative integration of technology.
Over the last few months, when I’ve talked with teachers about what is working well in remote and hybrid classrooms, video comes up. There are so many… Read more “Prezi Video”
Classkick is a web tool that allows the teacher to monitor student work, provide help, and offer feedback in real time. It is a great help to… Read more “Classkick”
Jamboard is an excellent virtual collaborative whiteboard. It is part of the Google Suite and there are IOS and Android apps too. On the whiteboard, the user… Read more “Google Jamboard”
Lynne worked with me as I attempted to make my writing feedback more specific and helpful. As an English teacher, I have always struggled to provide valuable writing feedback in a timely, sustainable way. Thus, I met with Lynne, and we developed a plan for improvement. First, she helped me by guiding some initial research that I did related to best grading practices. We discussed the research, and we agreed that more specific, standards-based rubrics with student friendly language would provide better feedback for students. She helped guide me as I adapted the rubrics and created lessons to introduce the new rubrics to my students. After the new process was implemented, she helped me evaluate the new system. Together, we found that the new system provides feedback that is more valuable, specific, and easier to understand, and my students appreciate the work that I have undertaken to provide better feedback. Additionally, I have seen their writing greatly improve, and I look forward to starting my next year with these positive changes. Thank you, Lynne!
We asked Lynne West to spend a couple of days with our department, showing us some web-based tools we could use in our classes and hopefully opening our minds to using the excellent resources out there more effectively. She was so-well prepared and flexible, showing great sensitivity to our unique needs and interests. Rather than follow an agenda of her own, she got us to a much better place in just a couple of days! All of us are using at least one tool she shared with us regularly now.
Sunodia Educational Consulting 