Teacher, influencer joins Grow Your Own program to support multilingual students

KALAMAZOO, Mich.—"Hello sweet friends!" says Western Michigan University's Kim Huls at the start of every video.

A Grow Your Own (GYO) student in the College of Education and Human Development's teaching English to other speakers (TESOL) master's program, Huls has chronicled her journey as an elementary school teacher for the past seven years on her YouTube channel, @elementaryinthemitten. 

"I started my YouTube channel when I was in my student teaching," explains Huls. "During the first few years of my career, I would try to do weekly vlogs to recap what I was doing in the classroom. It was a really honest diary of what's going well and what's really hard."

"It was fun too, because later I was able to reflect on those vlogs and see why was that really hard. And I've been able to use those videos as a stepping stone to improve my own practices," adds Huls.

Growing her channel to over 54,000 subscribers, Huls' success online has also given her the opportunity to connect with teachers across the country who have experienced similar challenges.   

"Sometimes with teaching it can be very solitary. I'm in this space with a bunch of seven and eight years olds, and I love them, but I can't bounce ideas off of them in the same way that I can bounce ideas off of another teacher," says Huls. "What makes social media so cool is I can share things that are hard for me or things that I've struggled with and then other teachers can say, have you tried this? Sometimes it's a simple solution that I just hadn't thought of, and I'm able to implement it and that can totally change my way of thinking." 

TEACHING THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

Hull's teaching style is also reflective of her passion for social media and embraces the use of technology in her classroom.

"We're really lucky to have access to Chromebooks, a smart board and lots of really cool technology in class. So we're able to use that to bring it up a notch," says Huls. "And it's fun because all of my kids want to be YouTubers when they grow up, so we're able to make our own vlog style videos of whatever concept they're learning."

Additionally, Huls will include different YouTuber's content into lessons to make it more interesting and relevant. One of her go to's is creating math story problems based on slime channels. 

"It's just an opportunity to engage with some of the stuff they're engaging with at home and it is really, really exciting for them."

According to Huls, she also uses YouTube as a resource for information for students. Most recently she relied on uploaded videos to further student's knowledge on firefighters and their responsibilities.

"We had a week where we were reading all about firefighter and in years prior, I had just kind of assumed that students know what a firefighter is and they know what the jobs looks like. But this year, I was able to be a lot more purposeful from what I've learned being part of the master's program," says Huls. "I shared videos that are created for kids on YouTube, like what does a fire station look like, what is the process of getting dressed with all of their gear? In year's past when we've read the same story I didn't get the same level of engagement like this year because I think they didn't have as much of a buy in with it. But this time it was so cool to see their faces light up and get excited about it."

CONTINUING SUPPORT OF MULTILINGUAL STUDENTS

Outside of the classroom, Huls is furthering her own education through Western's TESOL master's program. Designed to prepare educators to meet the unique needs of English as a second language learners, she says it was necessary for her own career.

"We have such a high population of multilingual students in this district that it just makes sense," explains Huls.

Huls is returning back to school as part of the College of Education and Human Development's GYO program. Funded by the Michigan Department of Education, GYO supports 80 school districts in the state by providing school employees seeking initial certification or additional endorsements with a tuition-free education. The College hosts more than 25 of those school districts, and offers multiple bachelor's and master's degree options. 

"The GYO program is really special in the sense of it takes the burden of finances out of the equation," says Huls. "Having the financial aspect removed from the amount of time, effort and dedication it takes for a degree is really impactful."

According to Huls, the strategies she has been learning through coursework have been taken back to the classroom to improve her teaching and student performance.

"The strategies and skills that we're learning in this program are beneficial for all students, regardless of if they're multilingual learners or not, it's just best practices," says Huls. "I feel like since being a part of this program, I have had more engagement, more buy in from students and my thinking is completely changed in what I'm doing in my classroom."

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