James Denby

I have been a teacher for over twenty years and joined the Common Sense community to connect with other educators and hone my teaching practice . My goal is to engage, connect, and support teachers in order to enhance their practice in the classroom. These days I do a lot of teacher training around coding and design thinking - helping teachers to find ways to bring those skill sets into their classrooms and existing curricula. This fall I will be joining the Faculty of Education at NHL Stenden - a university in the Netherlands.

As a teacher since 1991, I have now worked with every grade from K-12. In the time that I have been an educator, I have seen an incredible variety of powerful digital tools emerge that support instruction and learning. Making sense of those tools is what the Common Sense community is all about (and what Graphite Mentors like me are here to help with).

My career has taken me to 4 countries but only five schools. My most recent classroom position (and love) is middle school Humanities (integrated language arts and social studies). Throughout my career, I have worked primarily with English Language Learners (ELL) and students with mild to moderate learning needs. As a sometime language teacher and a permanent learner of languages, I understand the incredible role that technology can play in language acquisition.

Outside the classroom, I am working on several big education-related projects:

1. Creating learning materials for teachers that combine design-based learning and technology .
2. Writing and publishing teacher resource books in Language Arts and Social Studies for Teacher's Discovery.