Shelly Fryer is an elementary STEM teacher specializing in science, space education, coding, robotics, and developing computational thinking skills with students. Shelly is currently working as a 5th grade teaching assistant at Providence Day School (PDS) in Charlotte, North Carolina.
In 2022-23 she taught 5th grade at Shiloh Valley Elementary School in Union Country Public Schools, in Monroe, North Carolina. Shelly taught 3rd grade students at Casady School from 2017-2022. From 2013-2017 she taught 3rd/4th grade students at Positive Tomorrows (@ptokc), Oklahoma’s only elementary school specifically for homeless children. Shelly’s passions include developing health habits for life, empowering others to live healthy lives, and helping her students love learning. She believes student learning in the classroom should be engaging.
Shelly encourages students to make choices about how they learn best. With over 20 years of teaching experience, Shelly taught in a Chromebook 1:1 classroom in 2022-23, in iPad 1:1 classrooms from 2023 to present at PDS and 2013-2016 at Positive Tomorrows, and at Casady from 2019 to 2022. She believes students need to understand their voices matter and can be shared with others beyond the walls of their classroom. She was named a PBS Digital Innovator in 2015. Shelly was selected by PBS as one of four teachers nationally to address the annual PBS Broadcasters’ Conference in Chicago in May 2016. Shelly leads afterschool coding and physical computing / robotics enrichment classes for elementary students in grades 1-5. Shelly became a Code.org facilitator in 2018. She is an Oklahoma A+ Schools Network Fellow (@okaplus) and works to bring arts integration strategies into her classroom. She is also a passionate advocate for Maker education in the classroom and provides frequent opportunities for her students to create, make and learn in their classroom Maker Studio. She presents regionally and nationally at education and educational technology conferences. Shelly is a Seesaw Ambassador (@Seesaw) and leads multi-day iPad Media Camp workshops (@iPadMediaCamp) with her husband, Wesley. More information is available about her speaking topics and availability.
Shelly is most active now (as of fall 2023) on Facebook, but her older tweets on Twitter are still available on @sfryer, where she shared a variety of educational resources, strategies, ideas, and examples of her students’ work. Shelly also curated (in the past) educationally focused articles on Flipboard in several freely available magazines.
Learn more about Shelly’s passion for meaningful technology integration in the classroom by watching her 2 minute application from 2015 for the PBS Digital Innovator’s Program.