Teacher Feature: From Law Enforcement to Special Education

How often have you heard of someone who started her career in law enforcement, and decided to switch mid-career to a Special Education teacher? This teacher also found Deck.Toys to be so useful that she turned Pro and used it in remote and hybrid settings for her reading intervention class. 

Tracy Urban (@turbantech1) is currently a 7th grade Special Education Teacher in Pennsylvania, including a pull-out reading intervention class (READ 180) and two co-taught classes each of math and language arts. She is also a Girl Scout Leader of Brownies and Juniors. Her first 10 years in her career was in law enforcement, including almost 5 years as a police officer before making a switch to teaching to be more proactive to stem troubles from starting in the society!  She has been using Deck.Toys since August 2020 and is a Pro Plan user. You can read more about Tracy’s experiences in her blog: https://mrsurban966824022.wordpress.com/blog/

Deck.Toys: Hi Tracy! You have such a unique background! Tell us more about yourself.

Tracy: Teaching is my second career! After spending over 10 years in law enforcement, including almost 5 as a police officer, I decided to pursue a career where I felt I could help people proactively.  You see, as a police officer, I tended to “put bandaids” on situations, dealing with events after they had already happened and had already caused trouble for people. I felt that as a teacher, I could take my background and apply it to teaching children, which surprisingly was my career goal growing up until I changed my mind in high school.  

This is now my 15th year of teaching, 13th at my current position at Eyer Middle School in the East Penn School District, Pennsylvania.  I am married and have three children, and I love technology, which has led me to loving Deck.Toys!

Deck.Toys: What are the features that you find particularly useful with Deck.Toys?

Tracy: There are so many!  The most important thing I needed was a way to make students complete work in order, but I also love that it gives me the ability to “flip” my classes and let students work at their own pace.  I also love that it looks like a game and has gamification built in. I love digital escape rooms, and the Deck.Toys platform is the best way to create them. 

I’m big on data, and I love that it is easy to 1) see that students completed everything, and 2) how they answered each question using the Report App. Creating videos and being able to use them as deck backgrounds is also fabulous! 

Deck.Toys: How does Deck.Toys help with your Special Education program?

Tracy: I teach a scripted reading intervention program (READ 180), and this platform allows me to still follow the program while allowing all students the opportunity to show what they know, rather than only a few students who constantly raise their hand.  The ability to use the lessons in Teacher Sync or Free Mode and switch between them throughout class is amazing! 

Deck.Toys: Are you teaching your students remotely?

Tracy: I’ve taught remotely most of the year, and in the class I use Deck.Toys, I rarely have attendance issues. Plus, the platform makes teaching hybrid and remote students at the same time much easier. I put all of my remote students in breakout rooms and have them share their screens so I can monitor them while monitoring the students who are physically in my class. Since the platform shows the initials of students as avatars, I can watch to see that everyone is progressing through their lessons during class.

Deck.Toys: We’re excited to hear how you have explored almost all aspects of what Deck.Toys can do! How about the students’ responses to the tool?

Tracy: I have yet to hear a student say anything negative about the platform. In fact, when I announce that it is a “Deck.Toys” day, I often hear, “Yay!” This is the first year in over five years of teaching “flipped classes” where I have had almost all students complete their work in a timely fashion. I poll the students often to make sure they are not becoming tired of using the same platform, and they always say they want to continue to use it and love it.  

I recently had one student thank me for paying for the upgraded Pro version – she said it is awesome!  And when the students found the “power-ups“, things got crazy- in a great way!  They absolutely love freezing each other, sending parasites, and hitting the gauntlet!

Deck.Toys: We heard you are also using Deck.Toys for Girl Scouts meetings as well?

Tracy: Yes indeed! We have had virtual meetings the entire year, and Deck.Toys not only allows me to deliver content to two different levels of Girl Scouts as I am able to use the split path feature, but it also gives girls who cannot attend the meeting a chance to go through the lessons on their own and still earn their badges. I am trying to spread the word to other troops, since it is hard to keep girls in Scouts right now since they are so sick of virtual school.  But I have managed to keep 17/19 of my girls so far!!!

Here’s an example deck I used:  https://deck.toys/a/QkFwYzYc5. 

Deck.Toys: Do you have any other decks you would like to share with our fellow educators?

Tracy: I created this professional development deck for my graduate class, which is an escape room with a few technology ideas and has an animated deck background video. Have a look!

https://deck.toys/a/QkttGHBVc

Deck.Toys: Thank you again for sharing your wonderful experiences with us! 

Tracy: No problem at all! Deck.Toys is great and I am happy to share with all teachers too!

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