Eric Mills

May 2013

• Recognized for classroom project using NPR’s The Race Card Project story and submitting student work. Link to tweet.

April 2013

• Featured students in this highlight video from the 2013 DPS Poetry Slam Championships.
• Rocky Mountain PBS and KUNC co-reported on the DPS Poetry Slam held at the Denver Art Museum. Audio and video here.

March 2013

• Interviewed by Fox 31 news about co-organizing a district-wide poetry event to honor the passion of an East High School student injured in an accident. Article with video link.
• Organized regional qualifier poetry slam at DCIS with colleague Neil Pollard website here.

Nov 2012

• Certified in Linguistically Diverse Education and Social Studies.
• Presented to Chipotle’s leaders and DPS’s sustainability department at the Chipotle headquarters. Write up here and permanent link

Oct 2012

• Invited to design literacy modules for the Colorado Legacy Foundation‘s Literacy Design Collaborative

Sept 2012

• Awarded finalist position – my 8th period class has been selected for the final round of the Chipotle Green Your School grant contest to win $20,000. We celebrated with representatives from Chipotle and Denver Public Schools’ office of sustainability.

Aug 2012

• Posted the highest median high school growth in reading in all of Denver Public Schools: 78%

May 2012

• Featured on the Denver Public Schools homepage. Permanent links here (home, communications, feature)
• CBS filmed my class and interviewed my students (link to video) seeking a model for Memphis’s Shelby County School Turnaround.

Apr 2012

• Telemundo filmed my class and interviewed my students about using technology to enhance learning and understanding
• CBS Memphis visited my classroom to observe effective utilization of technology in an urban setting

Feb 2012

• DPSTv interviewed me about the “learning families” initiative, and the video can be found here

Jan 2012

• Redesigned, with colleague Danny Medved, HTEC’s study hall to be more forward-looking and data driven. You can read the writeup  on page two of the Teacher Leadership Newsletter or learn more about Teacher Leadership Academy

July 2011

• Spoke on using free / open source technology tools in the classroom at the Colorado Language Arts Society Regional Conference
• Met with Selamawit Ghebremeskel from South HS while in California at the AVID summer institute in Sacramento

May 2011

• My 8th grade student won the National Campaign to Stop Violence, “Do the Write Thing” contest. He traveled to Washington D.C. as an Ambassador. He presented his views on youth violence to national leaders such as the Secretary of Education, the Secretary of the Interior, the Attorney General of the United States, the Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and Members of the Congress. Here’s a behind the scenes look at his poem. And, here’s the school’s press release
• Appointed Language Arts teacher at High Tech Early College where I designed a school-wide reading initiative and taught concurrent-enrollment courses

April 2011

• Four of my 8th grade students won “semi-finalist” for the Do the Write Thing contest and attended the annual awards dinner on Wednesday, May 11, 2011, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. at the Mile High Station in Denver
• A student I mentored at the high school was awarded the Sach’s Foundation scholarship

March 2011

• Gave a professional development talk on using Google Apps for the Middle Schooler, at Aurora South Middle School
• My colleague, Lisa Baez, and I wrote a proposal for the Annual NCTE conference. It has been accepted. See you in Chicago this year. Our talk: Te(a)ch-nology in the Urban Language Arts Classroom

February 2011

• My fellow TCs and I have the backpack for kids program up and running! We’ve partnered with the Food Bank of the Rockies and we were written up here in the PDS spotlight