Showcase
This showcase is a collection of the work I completed in order to understand myself as a teacher, as well as the work I completed to understand my students. Ultimately, I believe those two things to be the most important aspects in becoming a teacher who is not only effective but who also transforms and reaches students. In order to appreciate the work I have chosen to share, it is important to understand what drives me as a teacher, and that is this: My students are my driving force. Being the best that I can be for them, is my driving force. If I feel like I am failing them, then I am failing as a teacher. The pieces I've chosen to share capture that drive. From the work I completed to improve my own creativity in teaching, to the research I completed furthering my learning about the racial achievement gap, this showcase captures the skills I have learned, practiced, and attempted to perfect.
Understanding Yourself.
The purpose behind the personal manifesto was to bring attention to the knowledge and skills I value as well as the skills I possess while outlining the resources that support that set of knowledge and skills. It includes a more detailed description of what the personal manifesto is, as well as my criteria for choosing resources. Quite simply, this personal manifesto sheds light on who I am as a teacher, and who I will continuously strive to be.
This assignment contains three different elements. A white paper outlining the creative process, and the cognitive tools involved, meant to serve as a guide to creativity in teaching. An elevator pitch, a brief video pitching the ideas in my white paper, meant to give a quick "sell" of my ideas. And finally, a tweet advertising these same ideas. My focus for the assignments in this course, and for this synthesizing assignment was "Re-Imagining History", so the context of the paper, tweet, and elevator pitch is the benefits of re-imagining history using the cognitive tools of creativity.
When you are actively and intentionally trying to be creative, there are going to be moments when you are pushed out of your comfort zone. For this assignment, we were asked to re-write the lyrics to a song to reflect our understanding of creativity, additionally, we had the option of singing it for "extra credit". It was really important to me to challenge myself to go outside my comfort zone and sing the song I wrote. It would be hypocritical of me to preach about the importance of changing things up and thinking outside the box and then not take up an opportunity to do just that.
Creativity is such an important aspect to teaching, it is all too easy to get stuck in a rut, doing the same things every day. It is important to think outside of the box and to challenge yourself. In trying to expand creativity in my own teaching, I learned about the different "tools" in the creativity process, cognitive tools. One of these tools is "Play", this assignment includes both my reflection on play, how it applies to my work as a social studies teacher, and my own creation that is born out of the "play" tool. This is something I've been able to use in my classroom several times to introduce my students to the idea of how German citizens could possibly buy-in to the Nazi ideology. This was the topic I chose to focus on in this class.
Understanding Your Students.
The objective of the course website I was designed was to create an online learning space for my students. This would allow for me to create a blended learning classroom. The website I designed includes my expectations for on-line learning, resources that will be beneficial in class and of course, assignments from my lessons.
This analysis allowed me to focus on one struggling reader for the course of a semester. The paper outlines some background on the student, including family history and the context in which I knew him. I also completed a reading test with the student. It then includes lesson plans to help him with his reading comprehension, a reflection on our lesson and recommendations to teachers and parents. Due to the nature of this information, names have been replaced with pseudonyms.
One of the biggest problems facing our nation today is the education debt, in other words, the gap in achievement based on race. This paper defines what the education debt is, focuses on the effects the education debt is having on our students today and most importantly, presents realistic solutions teachers can start using to try to chip away at that debt.
Teacher inquiry is a valuable tool in education as it allows us to question our own craft. Looking at experts in teacher inquiry can shed new light in how we apply this skill in our own classrooms. This assignment is a reflection on a teacher, Vivian Paley and her journey using teacher inquiry to improve her teaching craft. Teacher inquiry has allowed me to reflect on myself as a teacher and truly consider what I am providing for my students.