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Since his days working in the for-profit world, Harrison McCoy has enjoyed connecting with others. In fact, you could say his talent for networking got him into teaching.
“I was involved as a businessman in my local chamber of commerce’s business and education partnership program,” he recalls. “I eventually decided to change careers because I saw a great need for positive male role models in education.”
Fast-forward almost 20 years, and McCoy is an experienced educator at an early college high school. “At our school, which is actually on a college campus, students work on their high school diplomas and associate of arts degrees concurrently,” he explains. McCoy teaches computer applications to ninth graders and sponsors his school’s robotics club and yearbook staff.
McCoy also uses computers to connect with colleagues. “I network with other educators on social media to improve my teaching abilities and my approaches to teaching,” he says. “I especially enjoy being connected to educators around the world.”
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The new graffiti
In the classroom, McCoy employs a variety of tools to help students build their own connections, to the curriculum and to each other. “I use Post-it® Super Sticky Dry Erase Surface Sheets to create temporary writing surfaces on the walls,” he says. “For example, in one assignment I created a gallery walk where students recorded observations next to displays. The sheets enabled us to literally ‘write’ on the wall. My students loved the feel of doing something they weren’t normally supposed to do, and I liked the ease of gathering response data from their work.”
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Connect and collaborate
McCoy knows firsthand how important collaboration skills are for future career success. “The ability to connect is an important real-world skill most employers demand from today’s college graduates,” he says. “Collaboration provides students with the opportunity to learn from each other and use each other’s strengths to complete tasks. Post-it® Super Sticky Dry Erase Surface is a great tool to facilitate the writing and sketching vital to brainstorming, which is a big part of collaborative work.”
Teaching students how to reach out and make their voices heard is also part of a deeper lifelong education, McCoy notes. “I try to help students realize that they matter a great deal and have something important to share with the world. Then I provide opportunities to connect with other students so all those important things can be shared.”
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With nearly 20 years in education, Dr. Harrison McCoy has taught students in a variety of grades. He currently teaches ninth graders computer information applications at Arlington Collegiate High School in Arlington, Texas.
