Standard 10
Leadership and Collaboration
The teacher seeks appropriate leadership roles and opportunities to take responsibility for student learning, to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other school professionals, and community members to ensure learner growth, and to advance the profession.
Performance
10(e) Working with school colleagues, the teacher builds ongoing connections with community resources to enhance student learning and well being.
This year we wanted to enhance community outreach and enhance student learning through education about nonprofit organizations. Our focus this year was on Goodwill and the Hawaii Foodbank. To deepen understanding and have students experience the work and impact these organizations make we had our students visit these organizations and volunteer some of their time. I believe the education field trip was a huge success. Students learned what the organizations were about and were able to hear first hand and witness the changes they make.
I collaborated with the wheel instructor Dr. Kuwahara to create a fun cross disciplinary activity that would incorporate the organizations they had been fundraising for and learning about with their argumentative skills they learned in language arts. Together we designed a fishbowl debate. Students were given roles, where they would have to argue as their assigned role for an organization that would best benefit them. Students were to use their strategies used from their argumentative workshop to argue their side.
The students did very well in their debate. I was very impressed with their use of transitions, citing evidence, and providing support for their claims. At the end of the debate students had asked if they could continue when they came back from break. I will definitely use the debate fishbowl format again.
Performance
10(a) The teacher takes an active role on the instructional team, giving and receiving feedback on practice, examining learner work, analyzing data from multiple sources, and sharing responsibility for decision making and accountability for each student’s learning
I have included my weekly communication with my university supervisor because it provides written evidence of my observations and discussions with my CT, team members, and university supervisor. During my student teaching I provided my CT with copies of my lessons. Once she read them over she would provide suggestions. We would also sit and debrief at the end of the week. During the debriefing she would provide me with feedback on my execution of the lesson. I have included weekly communication for week #13 because I answered questions and provided information on how I implemented some of her suggestions. In this weekly communication I also provide responses to suggestions made by my CT and university supervisors. I also supported educational decisions I made in the classroom.
The weekly communications were very helpful as a beginning teacher. I was provided with helpful advice and feedback on my lessons. It also helped me document the interactions I had with my colleagues as well. As you can see at the bottom of my weekly communication #13, I describe a response to intervention plan that my team and I created for one of our students. A.K was having difficulty in our language arts course. Our team worked with the grade level counselor to come up with a R.I.T that included a weekly grade checks and one-on-one guidance during lunch. I believe that teachers need to work together to continue to guide each other, I will continue to seek advice and feedback from experienced teachers as I continue my journey in the education field.