Introduction: Hi, I'm Christina!

Hi, my name is Christina Cipolla. I am a native Rhode Islander and I have lived in Cumberland for the past 18 years. My daughter Rebecca is almost 20 years old and is a sophomore at URI and is pursuing a career in nursing. My youngest daughter, Julia, is almost 17 and is a rising junior at Cumberland High School. My husband Chris and I have been married for 22 years. Our dog Luna is a two-year-old Golden Retriever and she brings joy to our family. We love to bring her on long walks on the hiking trails near our home. 

I've been a teacher at William M. Davies Career and Technical High School for the past 23 years. I graduated from Rhode Island College in 1993 with a degree in elementary education and special education. I started my career in the Providence School Department as an elementary special educator and then, after getting certified in secondary special education, worked as an ELA/History special educator at the former district technical school, Hanley Vocational. From there, I moved on to Davies in 1997 and began my career there as an ELA/Science special educator. In 2001, I obtained a master's degree from Rhode Island College in Reading. In 2005, I moved to a reading specialist role at my school and have been working with primarily grade 9 students in this position ever since.

 For the past 8 years, I have been a member of the Davies School-Wide PBIS committee and for the past four years, I have been the team leader for this group. Through my School's PBIS committee, I've established a student advocacy group called Making Caring Common based on the work of Harvard University's School of Education's project of the same name. The students in this group work as mentors for younger students in the school and do good deeds and projects to help Davies and the surrounding community. For the past 15 months, I have been pursuing a Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) certificate and I am very happy to say that I have completed all of my certificate requirements and have only three more classes to go to finish my degree. During summer session two, I'm taking this course and a research course online through Rhode Island College. 

I just finished reading my first book of the summer, Deacon King Kong by James McBride. It is currently an Oprah's Book Club pick. It was a marvelous and heartwarming book and I highly recommend it. I'm now going to read Dear Martin by Nic Stone and hopefully, with a colleague of mine this summer, get an online Project Lit book club started with our students starting this summer and into the fall. I enjoy walking in my neighborhood or at the beach and during these walks, I enjoy listening to podcasts. I enjoy Learn True Health, hosted by Ashley James, very much. I admit that I spend too much time on my phone looking at Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube posts. However, I do enjoy finding teaching ideas and news stories on these sites. I usually like to watch documentaries on Netflix and Amazon Prime, but I did binge watch Outer Banks with my daughters this past spring and found that series to be delightful. My daughters and I are now waiting for the next season of Stranger Things.  I would like to get down to Florida this summer to spend some time in the Fort Myers area with friends and family but I am a bit nervous due to the ongoing pandemic and the increasing COVID-19 positivity rate in that area so that trip may be put on hold. As I have been staying close to home, I have been doing a lot of work in the yard and have renewed my interest in gardening. The pictures below show some of my current projects.

Through this course, I am looking forward to learning new strategies and techniques to increase my abilities to push out engaging content digitally and to increase my pedagogical skills in media literacy so that I can further develop my student's ability to informed and responsible digital citizens.