At Joseph A. Craig Elementary School, a TAP™: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement in New Orleans, TAP career teacher Lynn Foy uses effective strategic teaching practices to help first-graders meet and exceed grade-level expectations. After Hurricane Katrina destroyed the school's textbooks and resources, Foy designed her own curriculum and created her own resources to share with colleagues so that students wouldn't miss a beat. Now, as the school continues to serve a large population of students displaced by the hurricane, Foy provides a stable classroom environment full of instructional aids that make learning fun, engaging, skills-specific and grade-level-appropriate. Innovative in designing and delivering instruction, she makes lessons uniquely her own by adapting them to students' individual needs in what she calls "The Foy Way," combining research-based, data-driven strategies with creativity to arouse curiosity and stimulate independent learning. She uses project-based learning and technology, stimulates higher-order thinking, integrates lesson content with other curricular subjects, relates lessons to real-life experiences and establishes explicit learning outcomes. Her students have shown substantial growth on the DIBELS test, with 75 percent either approaching, meeting or exceeding grade-level expectations, especially in reading. Selected by peers as the school's Teacher of the Year, Foy frequently mentors other teachers and conducts in-service training for teachers at the school and district levels, sharing and promoting good instructional practices through professional development.
1994 Southern University-New Orleans, B.A.
