My name is Maria Besten and I work at Crystal Lake South High School in Crystal Lake, District 155. After years of working in the corporate world I earned my BA in German Language and Literature from Northern Illinois University and then my MA in German Language and Literature from the University of Nebraska. I have been teaching German as a foreign language for the past 12 years. I have taught all levels from German 1 through German 4 A/P. I also hold an ESL endorsement and have taught ESL 1 - 3.
Prior to implementation of remote learning I felt I was an advanced beginner in terms of technology. As we were all thrown into e-learning at the end of last year, I think I can say I graduated to a comfort level between advanced beginner and competent. And every day I have been learning something new! Now that we have started the new school year with full remote learning other challenges, such as Zoom, have made their way into my daily lesson plans. I have already taken two classes at USF that taught me some new ways of assessing my students using online platform, but I want to continue to learn more about different web tools.
Not only are we adjusting to our new schedules and delivery of instruction, we are also required to use the learning platform Canvas this school year. It certainly has been and still is a very steep learning curve and I hope that soon I will appreciate what Canvas can do.
I am married and have two girls, Alana and Alexis, and our little fur baby Nahla. In my spare time I like to work in the yard, read and travel. My newest addiction is creating Bitmoji classrooms - so addicting!
Looking forward to working with all of you and learning how to create engaging e-learning lessons in a collaborate classroom!
