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EDUC 5353-Introduction







My name is Katrina Lifer and I am a 2nd grade teacher and Instructional Technology Coach in small town Altus, OK.  I started my teaching career in 2009 as a teacher's aide and quickly realized how much I wanted to have my own classroom. I have been teaching 2nd grade for the past 4 years and served as an Instructional Technology Coach for the past 2 years.     

I have been married to my husband for over 21 years. We were set up on a date by my best friend during my senior year of high school and have been together ever since. Together we have 4 children (20,17,10, and 6). Our 20 year old was recently married to our amazing daughter in law in November. He just left for US Air Force basic training.  Our 17 year old is in her senior year of high school and will be going to Spain in August 2025 to play soccer for an academy in Castellon de la Plana. We love to spend time together by going camping,  hiking or traveling to new places. 

The community that I live in is amazing. My husband and I came to Altus, OK due to the US Air Force and after his retirement we decided to stay here and raise our family. The number one reason we stayed-the community. Altus is a smaller rural community with a population of 20,209 with a median household income of $59,857. In Altus the employment rate is 56.3% and 15.9% of the community lives in poverty. 

Working as a 2nd grade teacher in the community I have decided that my call to action will be to serve students in the district. After the readings for the week and our classroom discussion I am leaning towards the digital divide of access. I believe much of our population is living without a device in their home-aside from a parents cell phone. My district doesn't allow students to take their school issued iPad's home until they reach highschool. This means students make it from K-8th grade without having a device at home, yet students in 5-8 grade often have assignments that need to be completed with research and/or access to computers and internet. 

I currently don't believe that the younger students need to have devices at home, but after receiving many messages from my 5th graders teachers that provide links of quizlets and other means for students to study material at home, I want to do my call to action on providing the accessibility for students at home. However, that raises another issue-the lack of internet access to students at home. During Covid we quickly saw that there are specific areas of our community that do not have access to internet. 


References: 

U.S. Census Bureau, “ZCTA5 73521,” 2020, <https://data.census.gov/profile/ZCTA5_73521?g=860XX00US73521>, accessed on January 16, 2025.

Comments

  1. EDUC 5243January 16, 2026 at 12:41 PM

    Hello, Katrina. I love your Call to Action to provide more access to technology to the younger students. I was a 6th grade ELA teacher in a small community in Oklahoma (Kiefer) when Covid happened and we (I think most of the country included) were quickly exposed to how little infrastructure we had and how unprepared we were for something like this. Had my students not had devices, they would have been sinking more behind. We also quickly realized that internet access was another issue. Some students would have to resort to using hotspots from cellphones or going to businesses where they could get internet access. I look forward to learning more about your Call to Action in the coming weeks.

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