Karen Hennegan

Concerned citizen, Educator/Teacher, Foodie, Idea generator, Parent

Born in Indiana, rased in Texas after a brief time in Maryland, and headed to Washington State. Experience broad and varied in this world, I strive to condense those experiences into ways I can benefit my students and teach them about not just English literature, but the wider world around them.

fully educating adolescents. We must work harder at individualizing our approaches to adolescent students. These young students are going to be our future, and it is time we started working with them in ways that will develop them to create a better future for all of us.

So many of the problems our adolescent students experience in school today stem from issues that originate in their home lives and prior experiences. Affect is not something nice to pay attention to when working with teens, it is everything. If we can see them as just "inexperienced" rather than kids who don't care, we can make major inroads to helping these students become successful and ready to join society at large.

Curriculum Development, Educational Organization, Educational Psychology, Educational Technology, Elementary Education, ESL Education, Gifted Education, Learning Disabilities, Learning Science, Middle Level Education, Mind Brain Education, Reading Disabilities, Secondary Education

The first TED talk I saw was the RSAnimate graphic of Sir Ken Robinson's talk on changing education paradigms. I was blown away. I watched it again and again, and I would talk to anyone I could and urge them to watch it. I have had so many intense experiences with talks since then. I remember a hot Texas summer evening sitting on the back porch with my husband being amazed about gene transplantation to instigate glowing in animal body parts for research. I have cried at the poignancy of more talks than I can list. And when I need a boost on a bad day, James Veitch's spam talk is guaranteed to set it right. I have said since I first knew what TED was that it would be the first thing I would apply to if I ever won the lottery. I was blown away when my prior students came to me in the spring of 2018 to ask if I would co-sponsor a local TEDx, and I can't wait to see what comes out of it.

knowledge of the Victorian time period. I am a voracious consumer of everything I can get my hands on about the Victorian period in Britain and the U.S.