DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Standard One Roles and Relationships Overview

 

Throughout the course of student teaching I have developed strong relationships with students, colleagues, and the school community. From day one, I have sought to find out about students background and life-experiences and to draw on their unique funds of knowledge. I have worked to build individualized relationships with particular students, helping some students during my off period when they were in in-school-suspension for example. Additionally, I have made myself fully available to my students. I gave out both my cell phone number and email address and was frequently contacted by students for help with homework. I have maintained strong relationships with my students, even coming back after student teaching had ended to visit and help some students with college counseling.

 

My whole pedagogical approach is animated by rigorous high expectations of students. During student teaching I strove to maintain high expectations while simultaneously providing a safe learning environment in which all students felt supported. I encouraged students to become self-determined learners, taking more responsibility for their own progress and development. The notebook and folder containing daily classwork and homework assignments was particularly helpful for many students in developing organizational skills and taking responsibility for their own learning. One boy who expressed distress at my leaving thought that his dramatically improved performance was entirely due to my teaching. After a long conversation together he came to realize that it was because he had decided to apply himself and do the work and that if he continued consistently to put in his best effort he would raise his grades across the board. My students have taught me a great deal and I am most appreciative.

 

I am also particularly grateful for the relationships I have formed with colleagues, administrators, and the school community. I have had many thought-provoking and productive interdisciplinary discussions in the faculty rooms, especially with teachers in ELL, languages and English. Observing each day has allowed me to frequent some classrooms and become close with several fellow teachers. The administrators have frequently commented on my dedication and ability, and have tried to recruit me to stay and teach for them next year. I have conducted myself professionally, taking pride in knowing and following school rules as well as state and federal codes regulating professionalism. Overall, I feel confident that I have met Standard One.

Reflection One: Student Survey

 

At the beginning of my student teaching I asked students to complete a survey. I wrote questions that would allow me to gain a sense for this group of young people in front of me. Students responded by telling me how they spoke at home and with their friends, whether they preferred to speak or write their ideas, what kinds of literacy activities they were engaged in outside of school, their academic and extracurricular interests, and so forth. While I plan to modify this survey slightly when I use it again, overall I found it to be a very effective way to gather data on students.

 

 

Please click the link below to view examples of a survey students completed on the first day of class, my first artifact demonstrating my progress in meeting Standard One:

 

Student Surveys.pdf

 

Reflection Two: Student Letters of Recommendation

At the end of student teaching I gave students the optional assignment of writing me a letter of recommendation or condemnation. Informing them that they were the experts on whether or not Mr. Weber should be hired as a teacher, I told them how I honestly valued their opinions and feedback, especially their criticisms so that I might improve as a teacher. Student voice is always given the pride of place it deserves. The letters I received the next day were insightful, flattering, and heartfelt. In the examples below, students make reference to their experience with my teaching style that emphasizes multiple and competing versions of the past, high expectations, debate, and a relentless pursuit of excellence.

 

Please click the link below to view examples of letters of recommendation students wrote for me when I finished my student teaching, my second artifact demonstrating my progress in meeting Standard One:

 

Student Recommendations.pdf

 

Reflection Three: Fall River Public Schools Professional Development Certificate

During student teaching I took on the full responsibilities of my mentor teacher, including attending department meetings, faculty meetings, and professional development workshops. One such seven-hour workshop was on Social Studies assessment and was extremely helpful for me in thinking through issues of grading, testing, and other methods of project and performance-based assessment.

 

Please click the link below to view my certificate from the professional development seminar on Social Studies assessment, my third artifact demonstrating proficiency in meeting Standard One.

 

Professional Development Certificate.pdf

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

 

Benjamin Weber: Mid-Term Self Assessment on Striving to Meet the Brown University MAT Program’s Practice-Based Standards for Beginning Teachers

 

 

Standard One: Roles and Relationships

 

(A) Relationships with students and (B) Expectations of students. I feel that I have made considerable progress toward meeting the above two aspects of standard one during my student teaching this semester. My consistently high expectations of students animates and informs my relationships with them, and while sensitive to the needs of the diverse learners in my classroom setting the bar high and supporting their engaged pursuit of academic excellence forms the bedrock of the strong relationships I have developed. Above all, I have tried to make it clear that I believe in them, that I fully expect them to give me their best effort and focused attention each day, and that I will do everything I can to maximize both their learning of history/social studies content and their development of vital skills and capacities.

I have strived to build a learning environment that is safe and secure, and that is characterized by mutual respect, intellectual risk-taking, and productive work. My classroom has become both orderly and cooperative and I have established routines that enable students to succeed through maximizing their opportunity to learn with minimal distraction. Mutual respect is constructed in an ongoing way. Ideally, it is affirmed each time I respond to a student’s contribution to class discussion with positive reinforcement and critical rigor. Knowing when and how far to push a particular student at a particular moment has been part of the process of building the learning environment as they appreciate when I demonstrate that I expect them to live-up to their potential by challenging themselves actively to think. Yet, I am also aware of the way in which my comments to individual students also send a message to the whole class. I have found that physical space is more important than I had thought before student teaching, especially in building the class environment. Although I do not have a classroom which has presented some challenges, I use the space to structure learning environments. I reserved the library every Friday, for example, and established the routine that debates are set apart from other classroom learning. By having students speak from podiums at the front of the class, I have sought to give debate the importance that I have planned for in the curriculum and reflect that in my use of classroom spaces. As Professor Wakeford commented after his observation last Friday, “you have certainly set the stage for real learning to take place, I have rarely seen such focused attention.” In encourage cooperation and intellectual risk-taking by planning lessons that give students the opportunity to speak every day. Think-pair-share and whip activities have been especially successful in encouraging students to become comfortable speaking, as have whole class discussions and debate. I was especially pleased with the progress my students have made in terms of risk-taking when I prevailed upon two boys (in different classes) to follow through with their debate after they had each flat out refused, informing me “I don’t speak in front of the whole class like that Mister Weber, I just don’t!” Each did a tremendous job and it marked a major personal breakthrough (as well as a step toward greater intellectual risk-taking in my classroom).

My entire curriculum attempts to combat issues of social injustice and racial prejudice. Thus, as many students see people like themselves reflected in the curriculum and become excited by the social justice agenda of my pedagogy, they assist me in discerning and addressing stereotypical references to gender, race, class, age, culture, disability, and sexual orientation. Learning, for example, that slaves had agency even in oppressed conditions has made students comment that they never thought about how smart these people must have been to come up with the modes of secret communication and every-day forms of resistance that tricked slave-owners. I have also sought actively to intervene when noticing issues of prejudice; consider, for example, the following two instances (also, incidentally, two instances where I modified what I had planned to teach that day on the spot). First, I had a boy ask rhetorically that “if women were so smart, how come they were oppressed?” adding that he thought men were better than women when we were studying the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls. He meant to be snide, but I decided to take him seriously and asked if he indeed believed that men were better than women. I then took each of his arguments (differences in physical strength, mental ability, etc.) and deconstructed them before the class, taking the opportunity to point out that if he intended to best me in an argument he better come with evidence as well as work on his logical reasoning and public speaking (something we have been doing though debate). Second, I overheard a girl who was herself Black comment that another student of multiracial background “got that good hair” (referring, of course, to hair that was strait and more like White peoples). I decided to put my lesson on hold and, without embarrassing the student, I asked questions about standards of beauty and related it to feminism and women’s rights. Students were able very quickly to discern the socially constructed nature of beauty standards, specifically in relation to “good hair.” I also told them about my Brown Summer High School students who had done a research project on this and suggested they watch a documentary done by a young woman their age called “A Girl Like Me” on YouTube.

I struggled initially to enforce rules and disciplinary measures fairly and consistently, especially in regard to lateness (which is a perennial issue at the school). I asked tardy students to stay after school, wrote referrals for others, but generally was not as consistent as I would have liked to be. The lateness issue has improved dramatically more because of the relationships I have built with students than because of my using disciplinary measures effectively. Other classroom rules and routines have become well established and I have tried to be clear and consistent about deadlines. I check student notebooks almost every day and provide checklist so they know exactly what they may be missing and can make up the work. Systematizing class procedures and establishing routines has been especially important in working toward the goal of maximizing student learning and development. Students in my class all know by now that we work up until the bell unless I specify otherwise, a marked difference from every other class I have observed at the school (where students are either given the last five minutes as a reward or get up and flock to the door before the bell… walking through the hallways right before the bell and seeing the crowded faces through the horizontal slit of glass is actually quite amusing sometimes). They do not seem to resent me for not allowing them to waste any time in my class; indeed, I always acknowledge my students by name in when I see them in the hallways, invariably have students call to me during passing time, and give many a high-five on my way to class.

Overall, I believe that I am well on my way to meeting Standard One in terms of my roles and relationships with students and my expectations of students.

(C) Relationships with Colleagues and the School Community. I also feel that I am well on my way to meeting this aspect of the standard. I actively seek out advice from veteran teachers from various departments in the copy room or teacher’s lounge and make every effort to be positive and upbeat in greeting my colleagues. I have gotten to know the chair of my department as well as many of the administrators, all of whom have been most positive in their comments. The vice principal and sophomore class dean, for example, has informed my mentor teacher that he will “be putting the full-court press” on trying to get me to stay and teach at the school next year and I have been approached by three separate administrators and my department chair about the chance of my staying. I have been assured that they would have a job for me, and although I cannot stay, I am most flattered. I am also on very good terms with the custodians, security personnel, and office staff.

I have been following the school rules and procedures as well as the professional code of conduct. I have made increased efforts to work collaboratively with organizations and school programs, as I had more difficulty when I was unfamiliar with them. One issue, for example, was with an adult interrupting my class to come and speak with a student (not introducing herself or telling me what she was doing). Wanting to maintain the sense of purpose and minimize distractions, I informed her that I had no idea who she was, no idea why she was interrupting my class, and that if she would like to speak with that student she could take her out in the hall. After the student returned she informed me that this was an employee in “Resistance for Life” (RFL) a program to help young parents at the school. Upon seeing this woman again recently, I did explain that I was a student teacher, apologize for being rude, and tell her that I did not understand RFL’s procedures for checking up on students by dropping into classes.

I had a wonderful telephone conversation with a parent, but hope to do more to improve my communication with parents and community members. I called the home of a student with a history of failing grades, disciplinary problems, and schools suspensions. I wanted her to hear a positive call home and I wanted to make sure he would turn up for the debate. She was delighted to hear that her son was doing such a good job in my class and that his teacher thought he was a brilliant young man. She told me that the call made her year, and that she would give him positive reinforcement at home, and assured me that he would be present for debate the following day to help me teach the class. Sure enough, he showed up and did a great job! I would like to find time to call all of the parents and let them know how their students are doing as well as discuss ways to support their learning at home, but so far have not been able to make this happen.

Overall, I feel that I am well on my way to meeting Standard One in respect to my relationships with colleagues and the school community.

 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.