April 11, 2025
Teaching as a Gift
The spark of curiosity that ignites a teaching career can transform countless young minds. Sarah Webb from David Crockett High School in Washington County, Tennessee shares how discovering an unknown fact about her hometown – that Jonesboro was one of the first cities in Tennessee – launched her mission to "pique children's interest in our past" and "cultivate the love of learning."
Website: Spotlight 4 Success
00:00 - Introduction to Sarah Webb
00:37 - Sarah's Teaching Journey
01:40 - Student Learning Moments
03:28 - Experience with ABC Resources
04:10 - Closing Remarks
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Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company.
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I'm Devin Pintos, your host.
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We are here at the Tennessee Council of Social Studies in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, with our special guest, Sarah Webb.
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Sarah, so nice to see you.
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Thank you Nice to be here, thank you, and so you're an educator at David Crockett High School, I understand.
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Yes, sir, is that right?
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In Washington County.
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Okay, wonderful.
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So, sarah, tell us a little bit about yourself.
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I've been teaching longer than I have it.
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I teach US history and usually one section of US government per semester.
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Okay, that's wonderful.
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And what brought you into the journey of becoming an educator?
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I think teaching was always in my wheelhouse.
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I'm one of the people I believe it's a gift that I was given to use, and I think it was maybe my eighth or ninth grade year.
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Something came up and I found out that Jonesboro, where I live now, was one of the first city in Tennessee which I know.
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Elizabeth will argue with me and I was like, oh, my goodness, how did I not know that?
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Like why did I not know that?
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So it was kind of to pique children's interest in our past that it's important to us and then to just cultivate the love of learning.
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Oh, that's wonderful.
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And can you share a special moment you had in your classroom or with students where you're like, wow, they really got that concept.
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As you can see behind me, we have our workbooks and we have online testing and e-books that go on fancy iPads over here, for instance.
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They're all designed to help your students succeed and have higher test scores on their high-stakes assessments.
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Give us a call 888-264-5877, or find us on the web, abck12.com and you can receive a free trial or a free preview book of your choice.
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Hope to hear from you soon.
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Bye-bye there's a lot, but, um, I try to do a lot of hands-on activities or like making the students do some research themselves, and um, especially if they're working with a partner that I've assigned, not one that they've gotten to choose, and then so there's this one thing that I'm doing, like with a quick video.
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They get to watch the video with their partner and then they get to discuss it.
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And so then the next day, for the next 20 minutes, I'm like hey, you can pick your own partner or you can switch.
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You can stay with who you are or you can pick somebody else, and it's funny to watch.
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Like some of the kids the light bulb has gone off with.
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I know I'm with this person and I'm learning and I'm going to stay here and then, when we move into stations to start discovering, these children will talk about the things that they learned from the video, from where they've communicated with one another about it and just to see that they can see I know what happened, but now I'm digging into maybe what really happened, versus what nests, like I've seen, so like with primary sources, and showing them how to Investigate for themselves and make sure that they're understanding what really happened.
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Can you tell me a little bit about?
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I understand you've used ABC books before in your classroom.
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I've used them for many years, like I was telling the lady earlier, since they were green with the red, white and blue background.
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It's been a while, but a lot of times I use them for remediation or for my ELL students to try to get through those, and then sometimes they're used for reinforcement, depending on what the activity is.
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But the thing I like most about them is just how direct they are and the level that they're written on.
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They're not too far out of reach for high school students to understand.
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Oh, that's wonderful.
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I'm happy to hear that about their working in the classroom.
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So, Sarah, can you tell me anything you'd like to share with the TCSS community?
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Oh, I'm just thankful that they offered this conference.
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I like getting out of town and getting away and just a refresher to go back and finish out the semester.
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Oh, that's wonderful.
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Well, thank you again.
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This is Sarah Webb, the Tennessee Council of Social Studies, David Crockett High School, Washington County.
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Thank you so much for participating with us.
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Thank you.
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