Dallas Stars March 2024 Teacher of the Month

Future GoalsTM Program

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Dallas Stars March 2024 Teacher of the Month

Name:

LaConya Ponder

School:

Bessie Coleman Middle School

Classroom Team:


Tell us about yourself!

When I was in college I decided to take a child development course to satisfy a graduation requirement but fell in love with the field observation and decided to become a Teacher. I started my career teaching 2nd grade in 2017 and taught elementary for three years. I then moved up to middle school in 2020 teaching a new elective course titled “Teen Leadership”, which I wrote the curriculum for, and Financial Literacy for 6th, 7th and 8th grades. I now teach Avid to the same grade levels and have been teaching for six years. I am the Student Council advisor and I created an organization to empower young girls titled “Young Ladies of Excellence”. I enjoy building relationships with my students and teaching them the strategies needed to reach their full potential.

What is your favorite part of the Future Goals™program? How do you see STEM in the game of hockey?

I love that the Future Goals program provides fun learning activities that are engaging which my students can access at school and at home. Also, the video explanations that teach key STEM components that aligns with hockey that then allows for them to apply the skills taught is my favorite part of the program. I see STEM in the game of hockey in various ways. For one there is physics, statistics, analytics, biomechanics with the player’s movement, and engineering of the arena infrastructure.

If you played hockey what position would you play?

If I played hockey I would play forward because I have passion which drives me to make goals. So I would love to be the player to help my team to a victory.