LifeChanger of the Year Nominee Profile
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Jennifer Cone
Position: Gifted Teacher
School: Wacona Elementary School
School District: Ware County Schools
City, State: Waycross, GA
Jennifer Cone was nominated by her colleague, Jenny Dickson.
Mrs. Cone goes above and beyond her contractual duties as a Gifted educator to change the lives of others. Along with pursuing a specialist degree in Instructional Technology, she spends hours of her personal time focusing on advanced teaching strategies. These strategies help her create lesson plans which are critical for students to analyze and solve problems. Mrs. Cone provides an effective learning environment where students get to face problems personally, find resolutions, and develop as independent learners.
As the school's Gifted Coordinator, Mrs. Cone attends technology and STEM conferences, holds district-wide school academic competitions, and coaches a math club team that competes nationally with other schools online. She is also is one of her school robotics' team coaches and coordinates the after school tutoring program.
To build and extend students' mental math and computation strategies, Mrs. Cone uses "Number Talks" by Sherry Parrish, to engage her students in the development of problem solving. The students in her classroom can be seen collaborating on their ideas and brainstorming new strategies. Math journals are just one way students are able to support and share their learning in the classroom.
After attending the 2017 Georgia Educational Technology Conference, Mrs. Cone will be introducing the use of Breakout Games and hyperdocs to keep her students on track with the growing demand of use of Web 2.0 tools. Students in her classroom are connected globally with pen pals in Massachusetts, where they correspond via video and standard mail. In her current digital classroom, Mrs. Cone has facilitated the implementation of Flipgrid with her first grade students, which allowed them to create video discussions to share their thoughts and understandings.
"Mrs. Cone is a hidden gem,who rarely gets noticed for the many hats she wears throughout her days, weeks, and year," Dickson said. "Her colleagues have no doubt that Jennifer M. Cone is a LifeChanger."