Marilyn Piper—K–12 Representative

Marilyn’s teaching career began 26 years ago in New York City working with at-risk populations. After moving to the Seattle area, she became involved in teaching special education and obtained a master’s degree in special education from the University of Washington. She has taught various areas of Special Education including children with developmental disabilities, behavior disorders, and learning disabilities.

She has been employed by the Olympia School District for the past 27 years. In addition to her special education involvement, she developed and taught a class for seventh and eighth graders entitled, “Introduction to Foreign Languages,” that provided middle school students with second language acquisition experiences.

For the past 16 years she has been a teacher at Washington Middle School in Olympia, Washington. During that time, she became interested in the use of technology in education. Washington Middle School was one of the first six schools in the nation to implement Generation www.Y, a Federal Technology Innovation Challenge grant that seeks to improve education by partnering students and teachers to infuse technology into the curriculum. She has taught this class for five semesters and now serves as the Generation www.Y Project Curriculum Coordinator and co-editor of the Student Voices column in Learning & Leading with Technology as well as the Technology Coordinator for Washington Middle School.

Four years ago, the school counselor and she developed a girls-only technology class called Alternative Technology or GenGIT (Girls Issues and Technology). Middle school girls who previously opted out of technology take this semester course where issues affecting adolescent girls are interwoven with technology skills. This class was recently selected to receive the Intel Innovations in Teaching Award. Through this grant, she and her colleagues disseminated this course to the other middle schools.

She continues to be committed to exploring ways to use technology in education that truly improve student learning and promote partnerships between students and educators.