Mars Berwanger has taught Engineering at Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia for the last two years. He is involved with the school’s basketball, robotics, and SWE programs (and many more). Mars was a 2017 Woodrow Wilson Georgia Teaching Fellow at Kennesaw State University where he earned his MAT with a concentration in secondary mathematics education. Prior to entering education, Mars earned a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech and then worked at Clean-Hands Safe-Hands, a start-up company that reduces deaths and illness from Hospital Acquired Infections.

• Large school
• Urban/Suburban
• Traditional public school (contains magnet program of ~500 students)
• Enrolled students: 2,144
• Free/Reduced lunch eligible: 43%
• Demographics: Asian: 12%, Black: 39%, Hispanic: 20%, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander: <1%, Native American: <1%, Two or more races: 2%, White: 26%

If it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert and students spend 15,000 hours in K-12 schools, educators should ask themselves what their students are implicitly learning during that time. Many intangible skills (soft skills) students learn, such as collaboration with peers of different backgrounds and responding to adversity and trauma, are rarely explicitly taught. This session will address how distance-learning may inhibit the implicit learning students gain in a school setting. Participants will discuss how to address these needs through distance-learning and how, by being more intentional with our teaching during this current disruption, educators can encourage growth moving forward.