Employee Spotlight: Tony SanFilippo
Here at Audio Enhancement, we are dedicated to making learning more effective. Our employees are individuals who are passionate about education, like Tony Sanfilippo. After a teaching career of 19 years, he continues to make a difference in the teaching community through his work at Audio Enhancement, Inc. Tony is the Regional Director of Professional Development and is constantly advocating for technology in the classroom, specifically classroom video, and how it is a vital tool for professional development.
In the almost 20 years that Tony spent teaching, technology played a big role in his career. He taught math in grades 6-8 at Florida’s Ocoee Middle School, the state demonstration school for technology for over 10 years. Tony was over the media center and all technology for some years. He taught a technology industrial arts lab, and won the school’s award in 2000-2001. He was also department chair as well as an instructional coach with an emphasis on technology integration.
Toward the end of his teaching career, he was able to be a mentor and coach for multiple teachers who also went on to become Teachers of the Year at some point. Tony knows the importance of feedback, and has seen firsthand the difference it can make in teachers’ lives.
“The biggest thing I taught [as a mentor] is that asking for help is a strength, not a weakness, and that if you can identity your problem and find the right person to help you, that is definitely a strength everyone is looking for,” Tony says.
“Hiding your problems and working through them on your own because you’re afraid to let people know you’re struggling is a weakness.”
After teaching at a school in which technology played such a big role, Tony realized that cameras in the classroom had great value for feedback. Ocoee Middle School was the first school in the county to implement VIEWpath, a classroom camera solution from Audio Enhancement. VIEWpath allowed the teachers to record themselves for self-reflection, coaching, or other instructional purposes.
Tony started working with the company as a teacher in 2000 before joining Audio Enhancement in the summer of 2012. He realized he could impact not only his own school, but also the whole country by using VIEWpath to help teachers continue to grow.
Have questions for Tony about VIEWpath, professional development, or teacher feedback? Contact him:
Email: tony.sanfilippo@audioenhancement.com
Twitter: @techsanfilippo
