Tag Archives: audit

Standard 1 – Educators value and care for all students and act in their best interests

Posted on by
Reply

Artifact: Teacher Bookmark

Teacher's Role

Standard 1, to me, is a commitment to a classroom environment which facilitates the development of students on an intellectual, physical, emotional, social, creative, spiritual, and moral level.  This is the means through which educators can act in students’ best interests.

The artifact involves a bookmark given to me by a student at the end of the practicum.  By itself, it seems to be a typical definition of a teacher.  However, after learning through UBC coursework the various roles that a teacher embodies, the contents of this bookmark truly strike home.  Prior to the course in education at UBC I would’ve seen this bookmark as nothing more than a clever summation of a teacher.  Now that I’ve read and listened to theories behind all these roles of being a teacher, this bookmark serves as a beacon highlighting the fact that a teacher’s role is merely the tip of the iceberg that masks all the pedagogical research behind the embodiment of these roles.

Talent Show

Sports Day

Track & Field Zone Meet

At the beginning of the year, I walked into the first class of my bachelors in education journey with the notion that teaching was to stand in front of class directing a group of children through the activities of the day.  And that would be that.  That would also be exactly what I tried to do during my first practicum experience in January to various degrees of success.  I quickly met many situations which required more of me than simple instruction-giving.  For instance, I would have a group of quarreling students angry at each other regarding their different opinions on the most popular pop star.  Then on another day, half the class would be quivering in their seats unable to even go to the washroom independently.  Events at my school also demanded the use and demonstration of my extracurricular abilities such as being musically and technologically proficient in the school talent show.  Active students would look up to me after the staff dodge ball match and request acknowledgment in the form of “hi” or “hi-fives”.  Sporting events such as the zone track meet and sports day required instant feedback based on students’ performance.  Furthermore, there would be slower learners needing extra support whether it was in the form of tutoring or simply more attention.  The list continues seemingly without end even in the short 3 months that I spent evolving from instructing my class to teaching all students in the school.  I had walked into practicum as an instructor of mathematics, language arts, science, social studies, physical education, fine arts, French, and health & career education to 25 students and left the school as a guide, role model, coach, tutor, mentor, instructor, and trusted friend of far more than 25 students.

I now realize more than ever that to act in students’ best interests, a teacher has to be more than an instructor.  The sum of all the roles listed in the artifact reaches closer to what a teacher should be to students in order to more fully meet the diverse needs of all students.  Most importantly, I recognize that the list of roles will inevitably shift with more added when the situation calls and that it will be my responsibility as an educator to fulfill those roles when called upon in the school setting.

Standard 2 – Educators are role models who act ethically and honestly

Posted on by
Reply

Artifact: Case 2

Case 2

Standard 2 emphasizes the professional nature of education in highlighting two attributes that is often associated with professionalism: ethical and honest.  I understand this standard as acting in such a way as to gain the trust of people that we communicate with as well as bystanders who witness these interactions.  When educators are in conversation with parents, trust is given in the form of private and sensitive information.  While in the school, educators are in a position of authority, leading to educators often seen as role models to students and adults alike.  Thus in essence, because educators are placed in a position of trust and authority, we must act in a professional manner in all public situations.

The artifact I chose for this standard is case number 2 from a university course in the education program.  In it is a paragraph depicting a mother complaining about a previous teacher to the current teacher.  Immediately this situation touches on the issue of ethical behaviour on the part of the current teacher.  The dilemma in this case was whether it is ethical to engage in conversation regarding another professional with a client in a general sense.

What my experience the past year has taught me is that there can be situations where honesty doesn’t always result in ethical behaviour.  An example is if a parent asks for my opinion on a matter which it would be unethical for me to answer.  Prior to being exposed to case 2’s scenario and being ignorant of the full legalities behind teacher professionalism, I would have been undecided between unethically granting the parent’s wish to discuss another teacher and  honestly informing the teacher of this parent’s criticisms.  Fortunately, the case was presented early in the year and as a result, prepared me for the possibility of such a decision during the practicums following.  After learning some of the correct protocol in situations like the one described, my conclusion to that case was to “redirect Tella’s mother to voice her complaints to last year’s teacher or ask consent to have her complaints relayed directly to last year’s teacher”.  So it was with the guidelines presented in the BCTF Code of Ethics that I addressed this issue of deciding between ethical behaviour and honesty.

Case 2 taught me more than protocols, legalities, and choices because it also made me realize that the profession of education is on the one hand connected to laws, but on the other hand is linked in relationships with the school community.  It is the balance between the two that all teachers must find.  It is a balance that I’ve begun to see and experience for myself this past year.  In my future teaching years, I believe that in order to adhere to the laws that govern us as well as build strong relationships with whichever school community I’m at, I must act professionally at all times, and to do so, I will keep an ethical and honest behaviour as a strong opening step in achieving that goal.

Standard 3 – Educators understand and apply knowledge of student growth and development

Posted on by
Reply

Artifact: Running Record Workshop

Standard 3 is making decisions on curriculum, assessment, and method of instruction with the intention to develop students intellectually, physically, emotionally, socially, creatively, and morally.  It is making appropriate decisions based on knowledge of student growth and development.

This artifact is an excerpt from a UBC workshop that I attended during the winter term as part of the required course subject.  It was a general overview workshop on teaching phonics and reading in the elementary grades.  Of note in the workshop were two pieces of information: text has 3 sources of information in meaning, structure, and visual, and the optimal difficulty of lessons fall within the 80% to 90% range.  Although there was much more content that I learned in the workshop, these two pieces of information stayed with me throughout my practicum and affected many facets of my implementation.  Of the two pieces of information, the second statistic was unique in the sense that it was applicable to almost every subject that I taught.  Whichever lesson that involved a numerical assessment brought up the idea of optimal difficulty.  As well, because the language arts are so pervasive throughout the elementary curriculum, the first statement also had a large impact on my lesson planning, implementation, and assessment.  In this way, these two statements is an example of an experience which has allowed me to understand student learning better.

As a result of learning how students obtain information from texts, I proceeded to vary the classroom reading between the 3 types of cues: meaning, structure, and visual.  For instance, in social studies I entrenched a sense of structure into my class’ reading by naming the topic being read for the lesson rather than name the page number.  From my understanding of the UBC workshop, I believe that doing this prompts students to logically deduce that the reading is related to the topic that I had named.  In turn, this primes their thought processes to anticipate and expect what is to come next.  Next, I drew attention to pictures whenever available during reading and asked the class to infer some sort of meaning from the pictures.  Other than to maintain focus on the content of the reading, this has the added benefit of allowing more beginning readers or special needs students to “catch up” in a sense.  Finally for the activity, I would typically require some sort of representation demonstrating understanding of meaning behind the reading.  Through this method, I ensured that each lesson incorporated the three types of cues that learners use while reading.

The second statement was the one that was even more prevalently implemented in my practicum as I aimed for the 80-90% success rate in many of my academic subjects for my class on the whole.  In mathematics, this was relatively easy to accomplish due to the numerical nature of assessment for learning in math.  Language arts required a more subjective view of the necessary difficulty level, while social studies and science were similarly subjective.  With the observations in mind, I would then adjust further lessons on the topic to target that success rate.  An effective method for decreasing difficulty may be simply dividing a lesson into several smaller portions and providing more time for students to work on a particular topic.  In a way I was keeping a running record of the class’ performance in each subject and responding to each entry as an indicator of students’ growth and development.  Prior to learning of the optimal success rate from the UBC workshop, I would have intuited to decrease difficulty when the class is having trouble understanding a subject and vice versa.  However, this workshop provided me with a specific range to target and because this range is founded on research and experience, I assume it to provide the greatest benefit to student learning.

I believe that in the future when I gain some knowledge that illuminates how students grow and develop, that knowledge should be applied to the all applicable instances so as to maximize benefits to student.  This is because more in-depth understanding of student growth and development will result in more accurately addressing different students’ needs and modes of learning.

Standard 4 – Educators value the involvement and support of parents, guardians, families and communities in schools

Posted on by
Reply

Artifact: Parent Letter

Standard 4 is for educators to recognize parents, guardians, families, and communities as valuable educators in every student’s life.  This standard directs teachers as educators to work together in partnership with these factors extraneous to the school confines in order to better understand student backgrounds and characters.  In turn, students are benefited with a stronger continuity between their school environment and the community within which they reside.

The letter shown above was given to me by a parent regarding the testing and assessment of her son.  Specifically, the content of the letter referred to the special method of testing that she felt her son required in my mathematics 5 class.  The response that I showed demonstrated standard 4, which is that “educators value the involvement and support of parents, guardians, families, and communities in schools”.  Rather than interpret her request as a challenge on my teaching and assessment habits, I instead saw it as support she was providing me.  In turn, I devised a new way to assess her son which took into account his visual needs.  The adaptation contrasted from the typical testing that I gave the rest of the class by asking the student to physically show me on the blackboard how to perform the different transformations such as flip, turn, and slide by the use of construction paper manipulatives.  This differed from the test I gave to the rest of the class due to the normal test being of a more traditional written nature.  However, the questions given to both groups of students were identical; merely the delivery was different.  I observed that the student was much more at ease with answering the questions posed to him with this alternate form of assessment.  Reflecting upon this, his performance on the adapted test is very likely a better representation of his understanding of the subject matter than if he was given a traditional written test.  I feel grateful that his parent offered such valuable insight into the student’s cognitive ability which ultimately led to a more positive and accurate experience for both student and teacher.

Upon first receiving the letter from the student’s parent, I immediately felt defensive in that his parent was criticizing my instructional methods.  No matter how fleetingly this moment lasted, it was my instinctive reaction.  It was a letter reminding me of the impending error that I was about to make in assessing a special learner such as this case.  However, as I processed and reflected on the letter, I reached a more logical reaction.  Recalling the theorist Bronfenbrenner’s idea of multiple layers of interconnected social worlds affecting every individual, I realized this fragment of information in the letter was highly valuable because it is one of the few pieces of information that I have from the social world of the student’s family.  As I began to accept and appreciate the help that was being offered to me from a parent, I also began unconsciously adapting my test to suit the student’s needs as described in the letter.  It is only after going through with the adapted test and meeting with his mother that I came to the realization that I had inadvertently worked as a team with this parent simply by receiving the communication from her and responding appropriately to it.

In the future I aim to welcome these collaborative opportunities with parents as valuable learning experiences for me in understanding their children.  Furthermore, my response will be to initiate some form of follow-up with the parent whenever possible so as to setup a stronger understanding between the parent and myself.  I believe that this will only benefit the student, as this case has verified to me.

Standard 5 – Educators implement effective practices in areas of classroom management, planning, instruction, assessment, evaluation and reporting

Posted on by
Reply

Artifact: Science Unit Plan

Standard 5 is the performance of a classroom teacher in carrying out education as prescribed by ministry prescribed learning outcomes from beginning to end.  It is the responsibility that a teacher has to educate students based on these PLOs, and in carrying out this undertaking, many aspects such as effective classroom management, advance planning, detailed instruction, assessment, evaluation, and reporting are all required.  I believe that this standard is all about demonstrating competency in the aspects mentioned above so that the ultimate goal of education is achieved.

The artifact that I feel demonstrates all these aspects of teaching is the unit plan for science that I designed and implemented during my school practicum experience.  The focus of this science unit was habitats & communities.  As shown in the unit plan, the components of teaching are all in evidence in advance of my actually implementing these practices in class.  I first identified the PLOs from the ministry of BC Science IRP with relation to the unit habitats & communities.  Then, I summarized and divided the PLOs into two main ideas which resulted in two main themes for the unit: Bees and Habitat Diorama.  With these PLOs I designed lessons which I felt would be interesting as well as educational for the class.  Following this step was actually estimating and calculating the time required for each lesson to take place, which I have noted onto my unit plan.  When the lessons and possible extension activities were all slotted nicely into the time available, this represented the completion of my planning process.

Also included in the unit plan are simplified notations for possible assessment methods ranging from individual observations, written tests, project producing, and oral presentations.  My individual lesson plans exemplified more detail in regards to instruction, assessment, and evaluation methods with information specific to each lesson.  The reason that I employ a wide range of assessment methods is due to addressing a wide range of learners as suggested by Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences.  In that theory, different learners are shown to learn through very different modes such as visual, oral, and written forms.  It then follows that because learners learn from different modes of teaching, they will also have to be assessed in different modes such as through projects (visual/physical), presentations (oral), and tests (written).  I believe that a larger majority of different learners are addressed by this varied approach to assessment than a systematic assessment method with a repetitive and singular-mode format.

Diorama Presenting

With this variety in my lesson plans and assessment methods, the ways with which students are expected to complete assignments are varied as well.  Although my instructional method was often simple and direct, I found that the variety incorporated in my lesson activities addressed different learners quite sufficiently.  Therefore, a simple and direct approach to giving guidelines and the framework to completing assignments was suitable.  As a result, my class often had large amounts of in-class time for hands-on learning as displayed in the picture of the class working on their habitat dioramas.

Diorama Making

Throughout these lessons, there were many cases where prompt intervention was required.  It is in these cases of classroom management where a good classroom community is highly valuable.  Often, I noticed positive reinforcement and peer pressure in listening to a teacher’s wishes were very effective tools of classroom management.  In hindsight, after learning about the stages of development from Erik Erikson’s theory on psychosocial development, I now realize why this was such an effective tool.  According to Erikson, children in the age range of my practicum class begin to be more affected by their social relationships while moving away from family and teacher relationships.  Therefore, I believe it was easier to draw upon their wish for social inclusion than if I had given students a direct demand and solely relying on their relationship with the teacher.  I accomplished this through building a good rapport with the class so that individual students who required some form of intervention were pressured by the majority of students who had a good relationship with me as their teacher.

This program in education has taught me many schools of thought and theories in relation to teaching as a profession.  It then provided me with a practicum experience that was an excellent proof of those very same theories in practice.  After having gone through an entire term of teaching students from planning to implementation to reporting, I now realize that teaching is more than the sum of its parts in that the individual stages of teaching connect and link together in order to create what we call education.  Education cannot only be classroom management, planning, instruction, assessment, evaluation, and reporting.  It cannot even be a combination of those factors all combined in a classroom setting.  To me, education involves the aspects of teaching and the links between each one that ultimately creates a cohesive learning experience for students.

Diorama Display

Standard 6 – Educators have a broad knowledge base and understand the subject areas they teach

Posted on by
Reply

Artifact: Numeracy Research Package

I understand standard 6 as one which guides educators to have a varied yet strong pedagogical foundation behind the material taught and the method of implementation.  In combination with a thorough knowledge on the specific subject matters being taught, educators can make knowledgeable and informed decisions with a strong theoretical or experiential basis.  It is through this way that educators are able to ensure the best possible learning experience for students.

The artifact that best represents this standard is a research package that I produced with a partner on the topic of teaching mathematics.  First of all the package lays out the ministry prescribed learning outcomes.  Then it draws on various forms of research and theory that suggests reasoning behind different approaches to teach math.  Finally, it provides concrete examples of how math lessons could possibly look like when the theory is put together with ministry objectives.  The research package exemplifies the aspects of having a broad knowledge base in utilizing theoretical grounding as well as showing an understanding of the subject area in the form of displaying ministry PLOs and possible methods of implementation.

I believe that this artifact is one of the many instances which have shown me the importance of basing teaching upon established and well-researched theory.  Looking back to the beginning of the year, I now realize that I unknowingly learned this through multiple assignments and readings.  This research package was yet another one of these assignments which gradually consolidated my knowledge of teaching on research and theory.  As a result, my approach to teaching has evolved considerably into viewing teaching as planning towards completing or going beyond the PLOs and using pedagogy as a means towards accomplishing that.

My goal towards being an educator is not only to know the content being taught and using a teaching method to transfer this knowledge of the subject matter to students, but to use theoretical knowledge to make decisions on teaching.  It is just as important to firmly know why I’m teaching this material, why I’m employing a particular implementation method, why I’m assessing using a particular method, and why students respond to my decisions the way they do, as knowing the PLO aims for each student in my class and the knowledge that they need to attain in order to reach those goals.   This is where an in-depth understanding of a broad variety of educational theory will allow me to answer all the “why” queries and thus result in effective choices being made.  To accomplish this I will strive to consistently and continue to read research and theories related to the profession of education.  Even more practically, I will undoubtedly attend workshops and professional development seminars to keep updated to new developments in the field of education.  This, I feel will broaden my knowledge on the what, how, and why we teach any particular lesson.

Standard 7 – Educators engage in career-long learning

Posted on by
Reply

Artifact: Professional Development Reading Power

In my view, standard 7 means for educators to continue actively seeking improvements to their qualities of teaching throughout their careers.  Although there are many ways to do this, professional development workshops are some of the most direct forms to engage in career-long learning.  Another key aspect of standard 7 is the idea of continuous learning throughout a career.  This is the idea that learning to become an educator doesn’t stop when a teacher candidate graduates and is accepted into a college of teachers; in fact, it should never end.

Because there are so many different ways to learn as educators, I’m using professional development on the whole as an artifact.  Having been to several, including Janice Novakowski’s Measuring Mania and Adrienne Gear’s Reading Power, they have taught me many teaching techniques and ideas for lessons.  Other workshops focused on other aspects of teaching such as assessment and reporting.  They were all of value and have contributed to my accumulated knowledge.  First came Adrienne Gear at Trudeau Elementary, where she provided the audience with a detailed and concise overview of the program she developed called Reading Power.  She not only talked about the program’s goals and advantages, but she also demonstrated specific techniques, lesson plans, and teaching resources.  It was these detailed concrete examples which grasped my attention, as reflected in the notes that I was consistently jotting down while Adrienne presented.  Of particular interest to me was the idea of the OWI (Observe, Wonder, Infer) and the flexibility of such a system to be adapted for all elementary grades.  More importantly, learning experiences such as these expanded my view of education and motivated me to think about other lesson plans which could be adapted to a wide age range similar to Adrienne’s OWI.  Next came Janice Novakowski at Mitchell Elementary during the RPTA Extravaganza, which was a large assortment of different professional development workshops.  This particular workshop, Measuring Mania again provided me with more lesson ideas and resource materials than I could record or remember.  Unlike Reading Power, Measuring Mania was focused more on separate lesson plans and individual teaching techniques which could be applied to any class without chronological constraints.  In this way, Measuring Mania taught me even more ideas that I could immediately implement than Reading Power.  However, the key point is that both of these workshops contributed to make me a more knowledgeable educator than before.

From experiencing many workshops throughout the year, I’ve come to value the diversity in knowledge that the different workshops have taught me.  One of the main reasons that we as educators must continue learning is because the world is constantly evolving and educators must reflect that change, whether it is new scientific innovations, different social values, or a better understanding of the world around us.  As Julie Kennelly writes in her article, “teachers entering the profession now, with a potential career extending over 30 to 40 years, will inevitably have to cope with ever changing information” (Kennelly, 2007).  The need for educators to participate in professional development such as workshops is further corroborated by researchers such as Huberman, Thompson, and many others where professional development opportunities are concluded to have a positive effect on the quality of teaching in the classroom.

As I develop my teaching career, it is essential for me to gain as much knowledge as possible in the range of teaching styles so as to identify the teaching techniques which are most effective and beneficial for my students.  More importantly, I will continue gaining further insight into improving any and all aspects of my teaching so that the advancements in the world is reflected in my teaching.

Standard 8 – Educators contribute to the profession

Posted on by
Reply

Artifact: Appreciation Letter from Staff

Talent Show Letter of Appreciation

To me, standard 8 means to bring one’s own creativity, ideas, or skills to improve the understanding or function of education.  It is to go over and beyond the teaching to a class within the confines of a classroom or school grounds.  It is to give something, whether abstract in thought or tangible in evidence, to the profession of teaching.  This can be accomplished in an infinite number of ways since standard 8 is in essence to help fellow educators.

This artifact is a thank you letter from the teacher responsible for organizing the talent show at my practicum school.  The talent show itself involved a combination of leadership, organization, and teamwork that the staff involved had to display.  My own role in this school-wide event was as a member of the judging panel, supervisor, and sound system manager.  Whilst there were multiple staff responsible for judging of the auditions and supervising the auditions and performance, I was the sole staff responsible for setting up and adjustment of the audio equipment for all the auditions as well as the performance.  The performance went without any problems and the thank you letter serves as an important reminder of how I was able to share my knowledge of audio systems with the organizing teacher.

Although there was more than one instance in which I was involved with providing assistance with school activities, the talent show stood out for being one where I felt I was an essential part of the event.  It gave me an opportunity to experience the difference between simply helping facilitate an event to success and being an essential part of what allowed the event to occur.  This I feel is what contributing to the profession stands for; to provide assistance where needed rather than wherever convenient.  Through this experience and in contrast with some other events where I had less vital roles, I learned that true contribution takes effort, a lot of effort.  Even though I was proficient with technology and machines, the mere fact that any mistake on my part would be noticed by the entire audience provided enough pressure to make this experience an effort.  More importantly however, this has made me realize that effort is at least the one common factor in order to contribute to the profession.  Whether it is a contribution as small as ensuring the audio system worked smoothly for a talent show or as ground-breaking as synthesizing a new theory based in education, effort is required.

In my future experiences in education, I know that I will contribute in ways both large and small but in order to do so I’m certain it will require continued and consistent effort throughout my moments as an educator.

Talent Show Performance