DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
User-uploaded Content

My teaching partner and I acting out a skit on culturally responsive teaching

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Standard Six reviews the importance of a teacher’s professional knowledge and growth. This standard is divided into two key concepts: professional disposition and critically reflective practice. To embody a professional disposition, a teacher must master and apply a wide repertoire of teaching concepts in a variety of circumstances and situations. She must also have the energy, enthusiasm, and patience to maintain this professionalism throughout a full day of school and any additional activities. The teacher must be able to communicate effectively in all of these scenarios so as to convey respect and clarity of expectations to students, faculty and staff, and members of the wider school community. If a teacher has questions regarding professional conduct, she should be able to successfully refer to any and all of the standards that are applicable to her situation including the Brown Practice Based Standards, school rules and regulations, contracted codes of ethics, classroom standards, and all state or federal regulations. The second component of Standard Six is critically reflective practice. To be successful in a critically reflective sense, the teacher should ask for and accept purposeful feedback from others on her teaching practice. The teacher also needs to reflect on her own practice and ponder the ways in which she can improve and build upon her work. A teacher can build upon her practice by incorporating diverse perspectives and making use of new ideas and technology in the classroom.

 

Over the last few weeks, I have worked to build my toolkit of professional teaching strategies. These strategies ranged from folding a student’s paper in half so the amount of lines would seem less intimidating, to deploying classroom technology to increase student focus in the classroom. This summer at SummerPrep, my students were very active and excited to be together at school. My mentor teacher introduced me to a website called GoNoodle that proved to be a wonderful tool for our students. GoNoodle has a variety of movement-based videos for students that encompass everything from yoga breathing to Zumba dance sessions. We played GoNoodle videos at least once every day to give our students the movement breaks that they needed in order to be successful in class. We also learned to vary the videos based on the time of day. Energetic dance videos worked well after Morning Meeting, while quiet, meditative videos were successful transitions from recess to reading time. I found that these videos worked well for our active group, but these strategies may not work for every class. I intend to continue building upon my knowledge of helpful strategies so that I can be an effective teacher in a variety of contexts. The way that we practice responsive teaching will vary depending upon the characteristics of the students in a given class (Au, 2009, p.181). My goal in future classrooms is to remain flexible with my teaching strategies so that I can find the systems that are most effective for each unique class. To keep track of the various strategies I may use in the future, I have written them down by date in my “teeny book” that we created during the introductory weeks of the MAT program so that my thoughts are organized in one central location. I frequently refer to the ideas in this book for community building activities at morning meeting or closing circle, or whenever we have a few free moments during the day.

 

Upon entering the MAT program, I made two goals for myself: to be less self-critical, and to develop stronger skills in seeking and using feedback from others. I have been fortunate enough thus far to have daily debrief sessions with my mentor teacher along with several very helpful debrief sessions with my professors following lesson observations and some immensely helpful Critical Friends Group sessions with my MAT cohort. During these sessions, I have been taking careful notes and thinking about how I can use my notes and our discussions in future lessons. This note-taking was particularly important for me in finding strategies for improving my direct teacher presentation. My MAT cohort had some wonderful new ideas for cutting down my direct teacher presentations and allowing students more time to work and to share with one another. I used these notes when lesson planning and prepared several strategies to try in class including anchor charts and having students help me model tasks.

 

Our weekly completion of the Brown Practice-Based Standards rubric was also an indispensable part of this reflective process for me. I completed my own self-assessment the night prior to discussing it with my mentor teacher. It was helpful to break down my narrative into sections that mirrored the sub-sections of the Brown Practice Based Standards. I wrote in prose, which made the rubric feel a bit more like a journal entry to me, and I appreciated this self-reflective aspect of my work. When I met with Liz, I was pleasantly surprised to find that she and I were very much in sync with regards to my progress. In nearly every area, we had similar conclusions and similar scores on the rubric. I tend to be self-critical, and some of my scores were slightly lower than the ones that Liz had written for me, but there were no instances where we disagreed heavily or where I thought I had made more progress than my mentor thought I had made. By our final session on July 22, our scores were nearly identical. The fact that we shared a very similar view of my progress throughout SummerPrep helped me to realize that it is more helpful to be honest than self-critical. There will always be ways that I can improve, but acknowledging this need for improvement indicates growth, and when I focus on this growth, I think self-criticism falls away. I also think that sharing similar perceptions of my progress with my mentor shows that I heard and applied the feedback that she provided over the course of the three weeks. I am glad to say that I have made tremendous strides in accepting and using feedback from others.

 

During one of our Analysis classes at Community Prep, pairs and small groups of students created short plays about several readings related to employing a multicultural ethic of care in one’s classroom. Acting out the themes of these readings was a helpful vehicle for thinking critically about how we can practice responsive teaching. One of the tenets of critically reflective practice is the importance of incorporating diverse perspectives and getting to know what students of diverse backgrounds experience in their daily lives. This activity helped me delve into what Nieto (2008) meant by an “ethic of care” in her article “Nice Is Not Enough” (Nieto, 2008, p.30). We cannot practice this critical care of our students without responding to the challenges that our students might face outside of the classroom (Nieto, 2008, p.30). Participating in these plays and watching those of my classmates, I realized the many ways in which a teacher can explore students’ individual experiences, during both formal and informal teaching moments. This “ethic of care” might look different to different students and as teachers, we are responsible for reflecting on our practice in order to find and create that balance in our classrooms. In my classroom this summer, I tried to practice an “ethic of care” in my informal teaching during breakfast time. At breakfast, I asked students questions based on some of the community meeting activities that they were coloring. Since students had drawn things that they were comfortable drawing or explaining at school, I found these images to be excellent conversation starters. I discovered many interesting things about my students’ future goals when they drew what they want to be when they grow up. Building that rapport during informal moments helped me to engage students in formal teaching moments because the students knew that I was interested in what they had to say and the work that they were doing.

 

My future goal for Standard Six is to continue finding ways to diversify my teaching practice, particularly with guidance from other educators. I hope to use this process of feedback and reflection to build a broader base of classroom strategies for engaging with my students. I know that being honest with myself will be far more helpful that excessive self-criticism, and I plan to continue practicing this skill in my future classrooms. As I develop this skill, I plan to extend this honest reflection outward to the students that I teach, and encourage them to be self-reflective as well. I also hope to continue absorbing and applying feedback from other educators, and even from my students. Part of meeting Standard Six is being receptive to ideas and perspectives beyond your own understanding. I have been practicing this skill this summer and I have seen what an impact it has already made on my teaching. I realize that I have a responsibility to my students to go beyond “niceness” and truly get to know who they are. If I continue to be receptive to the diversity of the community around our classroom, I know I will find ways in which our class can be a community of care that respects and affirms each student’s background and future growth.

 

 

 

 

 

References

 

Au, K. (2009). Isn't culturally responsive instruction just good teaching? Social Education, 73(4), 179-183.

 

 

Nieto, S. (2008). Nice is not enough: Defining caring for students of color. In M. Pollock (Ed.), Everyday antiracism: Getting real about race in school (pp. 28-31). New York, NY: The New Press.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.