Meeting Standard One ~ Roles and Relationships

The student teacher establishes a routine that students understand and respect. Activities reflect careful thought, take into account student developmental levels, learning styles and diversity, and create situations in which students construct knowledge. The student teacher exhibits respect and consideration toward colleagues, particularly in team situations, supports colleagues’ work and contributes an equal share to team efforts. The student teacher encourages and elicits interaction with parents and community and makes him/herself available to those constituencies when and where appropriate. S/he clearly demonstrates leadership in the classroom, guiding and directing activities and interaction in ways that contribute to a positive and safe learning environment. The student teacher exhibits a clear sensitivity to issues of diversity, particularly regarding race, class, and gender, in his/her interactions with students, colleagues, and community. The standard is met if the student teacher consistently models appropriate decorum and exercises control without intimidation or domination, promoting a genuine democratically-based classroom.

This spring, I was very fortunate to enter both a school and classroom context in which the cultures were extremely strong.  I quickly learned how special of a place Community Prep was from the students.  It was clear from the ways that students talked about Community Prep that they really valued being at being at school every day. Furthermore, after observing the 7th grade, I also learned how strong a classroom culture there was particularly in the class that I would soon be leading.  That said, my task was to enter this space acknowledging that it was a privilege to be in such a space and that I had a responsibility to contribute positively to the educational experiences that were taking place.  While I tried to mirror some of the ways I had observed teachers engaging with students, my personality shone as soon as I began to get comfortable with students.  Below my calm and collected demeanor, or rather I should say on the front of, is a pretty expressive face.  My face will respond pretty immediately to most things unconsciously.  So, it is something students have to get used to and that I have to patient with.  However, my personality generally gives me the ability to be pretty direct with students in terms of redirection.  This is a skill I accessed frequently in order to redirect students such a young group of students.  But it was very easy for me to interact with middle schoolers and received feedback that they’d taken to me well into the semester. 

Outside of my personality, I was quite intentional around creating a culture of sharing our ideas and ourselves with each other, centering student voice, and learning about my students as much as I could.  The first activity I assigned was one in which they were tasked with coming up with three ‘personal artifacts’ that were significant to them (Artifact One). They shared the artifacts with the entire class and had the opportunity to share the things they liked and had questions about on a comment board.  The activity helped me learn about my student and helped deepen some of the bonds the class already had.   In thinking about ways to create buy-in for rigorous work by incorporating joy into class as well as building on the already strong culture of democratic discussion, I created an exercise called “Musical Partners” (Artifact Two).  This exercise allowed students to move around to music of their choice (if I’m being honest music that we mutually agreed or disagreed on) and engage with different students in the class for a discussion.  The questions guiding the discussion were also student-generated.  That way I was able to get students talking with each with each other about critical questions that they had come up with themselves. Finally, after learning so much from my students day in and day out, it only seemed right to acknowledge each of their humanities and thank them for their time.  My third artifact is a collection of individualized notes I wrote for each of my student at the close of my time with them.