Education Archives - Neighborhood View

Teaching through the lens of love: A conversation with Jennifer Hedrington, MA Teacher of the Year

November 20, 2020 NeighborhoodView 1

By Antonia Sheel As an educator and mother to young children, I had the opportunity to chat with the newly appointed Massachusetts Teacher of the Year (2021), Jennifer Hedrington a seventh-grade math teacher at Ferryway School in Malden, and her former student, Taylor Neal, a sophomore at Point University. The experience was both refreshing and inspiring. Our Zoom conversation touched on everything from what brought Hedrington into the field of education to how Hedrington’s teaching impacted Taylor, who has kept in touch with her years after she first sat in her 7th grade math class. This interview has been edited for space and clarity. Antonia: I want to say first and foremost congratulations! How do you feel? Jen: I’m overwhelmed and humbled. I’m very private. You know I went from having 100 people on my Facebook to 300 or 400. I’m like, oh my gosh this is crazy. I have to remind myself that this is not about me. This is about them. God has blessed me for one year to be a voice to speak up for the kids. […]

Teens bridge time, culture and language through film

May 29, 2020 Ose Schwab 1

By Ose Schwab It’s 1:30 a.m. in Chile and Malden and 1:30 p.m. in Shanghai. Fourteen-year-old Finn Sedan in Malden, Javiera Paz Valenzuela Rodríguez, 15, in Santiago, Chile, Isabella Zhu, 14, in Southborough, and Anny Wang, 13, in Shanghai, are laughing nonstop while making final editing touches to a short film that they have been working on together all week. “We were up late – well, not for me because it was 1:30 p.m.,” said Anny. “I guess we did not start editing until that last day. We worked for five hours on Zoom. But it was not painful. It was chill. We were joking, editing, and talking about ourselves. Our mentors, Avion and Sophie, made us feel so comfortable and we had become friends. I was sad this was the last working session together.” The teenagers’ short film titled “Isolation” would be screened later that day (the next morning for Anny) as part of an international filmbuilding workshop for 13 teens from China, Chile, and the United States, sponsored by MATV (UMA) and Zoom-In Zoom-Out, an […]