Deana Swanson

Deana is currently teaching at Maple Grove Mennonite Academy. She has been a teacher in some capacity for forty years, spending thirteen years teaching in private schools, twelve years homeschooling, and twenty-five years instructing public and private school music programs. Deana holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication from the University of Texas at Arlington and completed the teacher's certification program in secondary English education at Valdosta State University. She enjoys art, reading, writing, playing board games with her family, and composing Scripture memory songs to help her students memorize Scripture. Deana lives in Terre Hill, Pennsylvania with her husband Jeff, three of her five children, and four cats.

Designing and Managing Student Projects

While most of our class time should be spent covering major concepts and the material in our textbooks, there is much value in having students complete projects. It has been proven that students learn more and retain information...

Habits to Sustain Long-term Career Teaching

This year marks my fourteenth year teaching full-time in a parochial school classroom, and it hasn’t always been easy. But, because I love teaching and spending my time imparting knowledge to and guiding little humans, it has...

Guiding Students Through the Process of Writing Research Papers

Research papers are probably the most daunting of all assignments for school students. Keeping that in mind, these steps are designed for younger students (grades seven and eight) or for high school students who are unfamiliar...

Dedication: Making Any Curriculum Work in Your Classroom

Dedicated teachers should be able to make just about any curriculum work well for their students. It may be challenging, frustrating, and take some extra time, but the rewards are well worth it. Your students will be able to...

Top Five Practices for Science Class

When I think back to when I was in school, I think science was my least favorite subject. It didn’t make sense to me, and I thought it was boring. Now that I’m teaching, science is one of my favorite subjects. Doing these five...

The Textbooks We Use: Exposure vs. Mastery

There are many different publishers and textbooks available to schools, but all curricula are not created equal. Some are superior, some are mediocre, and some can cause major problems in the classroom. We should be wise and...

Bible Memory: From Traumatic Cramming to Hidden Deep in Their Hearts

Cramming for Bible memory is frustrating for both students and parents, and it is NOT hiding God’s word in their hearts, yet that is what a majority of our students do. This session will present several practical ways that...

Teaching Generation Alpha Students

Generation Alpha students are the children who have been born in the years after 2010. They are growing up surrounded by and often immersed in technology. They are about age twelve and younger, around grades one through six, and...

Book Review: Total Participation Techniques

Book Review: Total Participation Techniques: Making Every Student an Active Learner b y Persida Himmele & William Himmele One of my goals this year was to involve my students in my lessons and learning as much as I possibly...

Book Review: Why Don’t Students Like School?

Daniel T. Willingham, a cognitive scientist, wrote this fascinating book about how the mind works, how this relates to student learning, and to how and what we are teaching in the classroom. The answers to these questions he...

It’s May! Summer is Coming!

Photo by corina ardeleanu on Unsplash While I do love teaching and enjoy my job greatly, it is stressful being responsible for little humans all day, and one of the perks of being a teacher is having the summer “off.” (In many...

The Joys and Challenges of Teaching Generation Z Students

I began teaching before everyday Americans had computers or email in their homes. I remember when students had to get books from the library or use encyclopedias to get information for reports, and when students handed in papers...

Five Go-to Practices to Energize Your History Class

Photo by Matvey Smirnov on Unsplash History is actually a class where we learn about real people and true stories about what they did. It should be fascinating—not boring. Here are a few ways to make history more interesting for...

Jump-start Your Bible Class with These Five Tips

Photo by The Miscellanista on Unsplash Bible class is the most important class we teach. How can we make it come alive for students? What can we do to keep students’ attention, keep them involved in class, and help them apply...

Five Helpful Practices for English Class

Photo by Katerina Holmes from Pexels Here are a few suggestions that I have found to be very helpful when teaching English classes. Too often, some of these concepts are confusing to students, and they fail to grasp onto them,...