Catharyn C. Shelton, PhD

Teachers turn to online sources for classroom inspiration and support, ranging from teachers' blogs, social media, and virtual marketplaces. Online teacherpreneurs are current and former P -12 teachers who share their ideas and resources in the teacher-to-teacher marketplace of ideas - spaces including TeachersPayTeachers.com, Instagram, and Pinterest, often for financial gain (Shelton & Archambault, 2018). This practice may empower teachers as leaders in their profession, rather than corporate curriculum distributors. It also presents challenges around the quality of teacher-created content, who gets to have a voice in the creation of curricula, and the platformization of teachers' work. In response, Catharyn and colleagues have called for supporting teachers' development of critical digital literacies centered on justice-oriented approaches, while also advocating that for-profit platforms operating in the education sphere be held accountable.

How can online teacher education courses be (re)designed with a humanized and democratic approach? Recently, we applied critical, humanizing approaches to design and support online learning experiences for teachers that are humanized and culturally responsive (Shelton, Aguilera, Gleason, & Mehta, 2020). An example of my humanized approach to online learning is showcased on Feminist Pedagogies Online's Annotated Assignments, where my annotated assignment, Dissecting Current Events Through Collaborative Virtual Mind Mapping with Google Draw is shared.

Most of Catharyn's K-12 classroom teaching was spent in the high school Spanish classroom, working with linguistically and culturally diverse students at a large urban public school. During that time, she was named the Arizona Language Association's Early Career Educator of the Year and was awarded a $10,000 Century Link grant for classroom iPads for her project-based learning proposal. She also brings K-12 experience as a bilingual elementary teacher, professional development coordinator, mentor of student teachers, and special education paraprofessional.