Lead Teacher/ILS

Elizabeth Footit Simons has been working at The Springfield Renaissance School since 2015. Before becoming the EL Resource Teacher, Elizabeth was the sixth grade ELA educator and team leader. During her time at Renaissance, Elizabeth has implemented aspects of EL Education’s model in her own classroom and has continued to grow her practice through professional development, collaboration with colleagues, and reflection. She served as a resource to others by opening her classroom to educators from within Renaissance, the district, and the wider EL Education network. Elizabeth also facilitated a workshop on consistencies and structures that create an empowering classroom culture at the EL Education National Conference in 2018 and has supported Renaissance’s Site Seminar workshops for several years. In 2019, she received the Pioneer Valley Excellence in Teaching - New Educator Award.

Elizabeth is excited to help rethink how EL Education’s model lives and breathes in the work we do at Renaissance. As a starting point, she has worked this summer to outline an approach and create resources that reinforce Crew as a culture and structure at Renaissance. A professional development website has been designed to support conversations and learning around Crew; it includes a weekly schedule structure, curriculum outline for grade levels, readings, videos, and a rationale for why Crew is an essential component of learning at Renaissance. In the future, she looks forward to continuing to work with staff members and EL Education partners to implement and strengthen the EL model at Renaissance.

I grew up in Springfield and Amherst, Massachusetts. I attended Skidmore College in upstate New York and graduated with a degree in Government. I then returned to Western Massachusetts to earn my Master in the Art of Teaching from UMass-Amherst. This is my 14th year at the Springfield Renaissance School and my third as the English Instructional Leadership Specialist. Outside of school, I enjoy time with my husband and two children, Finn and Isabel, and go on hikes, travel, cook, read, and drinks lots of chai tea.