Jose Marti MAST 6-12 Academy, located at 5701 West 24 Avenue in Hialeah, is a full Magnet School that educates many children from Miami Lakes. The school’s motto is “Where Learning Means More Doing” and provides the ideal environment for this year’s Teacher of the Year, Paul Dean.
Dean, who has been at the school for three years, thrives on “hands-on learning” while teaching chemistry, physics and various science based research classes taught at the school. One of his main practices is ‘flipping’ the classroom and the gradual release instructional model.
Dean has found that students need a greater sense of confidence. The flipped classroom model asks students to fully read the material first, and then seek supportive resources or a “second voice.” They are now prepared for lecture and they need not focus their efforts on scrambling to write everything down, but rather they are actively listening and able to fill in the areas where the reading or material may have been confusing.