Standard Two Student as Learner Overview
I believe that I have met standard for proficiency in recognizing and appreciating the diverse learners in my classroom. Throughout the course of my student teaching, I have sought to find out pertinent information about my students’ backgrounds and home-lives. I have used both formal and informal methods, from surveys of the whole class to individual conversations. Students have become comfortable with me, and I have reached a deep level of trust and mutual respect with many. Some students, for example, call me to let me know of challenges they are facing or to ask advice in resolving a disciplinary problem at school. I have managed to advocate for and support students while maintaining my professional role as teacher in the school.
I have differentiated my instruction in order to give each student the best chance to succeed in my classroom. On projects, for example, I will include writing, oral, and artistic components and allow students to play to their strengths. I have been especially attentive to struggling learners in my classroom, working with one student on an IEP and observing her speech classes. One day when I came to speech therapy, she was practicing the phrase “My teacher is as mean as my mom.” I laughed and asked if that was in reference to me. She nodded, then went on to explain that I push her more than any of her other teachers. I was honored to be put in the same category as her mother, and thought it indicative of my efforts to help her to break through some habits of “learned helplessness” and become more self-determined. She has grown to trust me and appreciates that I do not expect less of her because of her physical disability.
I have sought to cultivate a classroom culture that encourages and respects student voice. I have taken every opportunity to work to better “understand their understanding,” and feel that I have certainly met the requirements of this standard.
Reflection One: Lowell Mill Girls Group Project
In making the guidelines for a group project on the Lowell Mill Girls, I was careful to differentiate the roles within the groups in order to give students with a range of strengths and interests, multiple intelligences, and different learning styles the best chance to succeed. Although group work can be complicated by social dynamics – some students complained that I had assigned groups, for example – I found pedagogically influenced group selection to be an effective way to assure that every student excelled.
Please click on the links below to view the guidelines for the group project as well as an example of a compelling poem a student wrote about the Lowell Mill Girls as the artistic component of their presentation, my first artifact demonstrating my progress in meeting Standard Two.
Lowell Mill Girls Group Project.pdf
Lowell Mill Girls Student Poem.pdf
Reflection Two: Example IEP
Although I only had one student with an “Individualized Education Program” (IEP) during my student teaching, I am fully aware that I am likely to encounter many IEP, special education, and other diverse learners in my teaching. I learned a tremendous amount by accessing this one student’s IEP and thinking about questions of how best to reach students with individualized educational plans. Below I have provided the first page of a student’s IEP; all personal information has been removed in order to protect the student. Although this example is not filled out, notice the kinds of categories on this first page of the IEP: current levels of educational performance, other educational needs, age-specific considerations, how disability affects progress in specific areas, types of accommodations student receives, and so forth.
Please click on the link below to view the first page of an example of an IEP, my second artifact demonstrating proficiency in meeting Standard Two:
Reflection Three: Making Text to Self Connections
Over the course of my student teaching I sought to connect history to issues in the students lives and to help them make connections between past and present and to relate material to their own experiences. I did this through questioning and discussion and also through written work such as free write exit tickets and graphic organizers. The “Text to Self” organizer below is one example of the kind of handout that encouraged students to make these connections.
Please click on the link below to view the “Text to Self” worksheet, my third artifact demonstrating proficiency in meeting Standard Two:
Benjamin Weber: Mid-Term Self Assessment on Striving to Meet the Brown University MAT Program’s Practice-Based Standards for Beginning Teachers
2. Standard Two: Student as Learner
While I certainly feel that I demonstrate an awareness of, and concern for, the diverse learners in my classroom, I could be doing much more to differentiate my instruction and both document and help students facing learning challenges (but without formal diagnosis or an IEP). I have taken steps to find out about students’ backgrounds in formal and informal ways. More recently I have become aware of differences in patterns of language use, organizational ability, developmental levels, and learning styles due in part to my getting to know students better. I think that I am approaching Standard Two.
Beginning my student teaching with a questionnaire modeled on the one from the book Fires in the Bathroom, I attempted to gather interest about students’ backgrounds, educational resources outside of school, interests, and talents… to access their “funds of knowledge” so to speak. I was also careful to examine their past academic performance while not allowing it to bias my judgment or lower my expectations. I always seek to connect history to issues in their own lives and have done this in a number of ways. I often try to identify a concept and put it into an enduring human understanding. When teaching the different perspectives on the Mexican/American War, for example, I asked that students consider a fight they had with a friend or sibling and how they could have both experience the exact same event yet come away with very different versions of the story. Another example was when I began class by telling them about the tattoo on my back commemorating one of my best friends who was killed when I was in high school (it may sound heavy or overly personal but it was an extremely effective hook, grabbing their attention and making a suspenseful learning environment in which you could have heard a pin drop). I then asked them to close their eyes and think about a loved one who died or, if they had been fortunate enough not to loose someone yet, to think about what it would be like to loose a parent. This connected the lesson on the Trail of Tears and Indian Removal to issues in their own lives, helping them not only to develop empathy but also setting up a discussion of how we are desensitized to mass violence and how arbitrary the death tolls of the war in Iraq or the Indian Removal project seem to the uncritical or unengaged person.
Perhaps because of my high expectations or because of my strong commitment to purposeful teaching and making every minute count, I may have pushed the pace to fast for some students. Striking the balance between showing that you fully expect hard work and dedicated effort for a fifty minute period and simply going to quickly for some students to succeed has been difficult for me. Disaggregating issues of motivation and attitude from developmental and/or learning differences has also been a challenge. I tried to put structures in place to enable me better to “understand their understanding,” but it was not until recently that I began noticing and attending to the needs of particular “outlier” (for lack of a better term) students. I frequently have asked students to respond to exit tickets aimed at metacognitive understanding, and also regularly include a question on the weekly comprehension quiz that asks students something to the effect of, “How are you doing in my class? What can you do to improve? What can I do to help you improve?” or “What was the most important thing you learned about last week and way?” I also collect and assess their notebooks almost every single day and am able to identify patterns in student completion of classwork. When working on developing the skill of note-taking, for example, I was able to see that some students copy from the board very well while others are better able to write what they hear (and this was not as far as I can tell purely a differences between visual and auditory learning styles). There are a two or three students in each class for whom I need to be more proactive about making accommodations. When I reprimanded one particularly disruptive student for side chatter, for example, replied “I have attention issues, Mr. Weber!” Something clicked and I inwardly shook my head at myself thinking “of course, why didn’t I think of that before.” Among other things, I plan to implement a seating chart because I need to provide modifications for certain students but do not want them to feel singled out.
Overall, I think that I am approaching Standard Two and sincerely hope to have met it by the end of my student teaching.
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