Edulastic Innovator Spotlight: Latasha Hailey

We are thrilled to introduce Edulastic Innovator Spotlight member Latasha Hailey! Latasha is a 5th-grade teacher in Raytown, MO. She uses Edulastic to help give her students lots of “at-bats” before state tests and other summative exams. Latasha recently shared some of her tips and tricks in this state test prep webinar. Thanks, Latasha!

Get to know Latasha Hailey

What inspired you to work in education?

I was working as a Graduate Assistant and realized that there were several gaps in the students that I was working with that had entered the college landscape. Upon discovering this, I decided to divert my path to teaching at the collegiate level and go into the lower levels to teach.

How did you learn about Edulastic? What is your Edulastic story?

During my first year at my current school, my principal showed me this cool system that I could use for online assessments. Just looking at it with her for five minutes, I was hooked and thrilled to use it in my classroom.

What do you love about Edulastic? How do you use it in your classroom?

I love how it mirrors the platform that my students will see when they take the state assessment. By giving them multiple at-bats it has transformed my students’ anxiety and helped them to focus on the work. I use it as my main data source to help me drive my instruction. It helps me know what areas I need to improve upon and re-teach.

Please sum up your teaching philosophy in a few sentences?

I believe students should have the opportunity to explore to formulate their ideas before we actively engage in a concept. I think by building that background knowledge on their own with something it really helps students tap into taking on the responsibility of learning something from a desire stance instead of a forced stance.

Share an #EduVictory from the past year. In other words, do you have a particular success story that happened in your classroom or school?

My success story for these past two years has been each year our 5th-grade proficiency rates have increased. My students are really locked into improving instead of the fear I used to see in their eyes about looking at their assessment scores.