“How can I most effectively navigate being myself as a teacher of a diverse group of students, their families, communities and our colleagues in ways that support development, social justice & democracy?”

The primary focus of your work this quarter is to develop a practice of professional development and to refine your skills for engaging with colleagues in professional learning communities.  You will follow through on your Professional Growth Plan (PGP) by critically reading and synthesizing professional educational research and writing a synthesis paper.  At the end of the quarter you will present a workshop to fellow educators (your peers & anyone else you choose to invite) sharing what you have learned from the research and how you plan refine your practice.  You will complete the final step of the PGP during your second student teaching by applying and critically reflecting on your growing competency with the area you investigated this quarter.

In addition to the PGP you will engage critical reflection and ongoing refinement of classroom management practices. For this strand, you will continue to investigate how to effectively manage the classroom for learning with respect and consideration for all community members. You will become more familiar with the myriad of classroom responsibilities and differing discipline models in order to articulate and implement your own classroom management plan.

In our ongoing examination of how to adapt lessons to meet learner needs, you will learn about the nature and processes of differentiation.  You will continue to develop your routines for anticipating student learning needs in your lesson planning by refining your knowledge of the specific learning experiences, strengths and needs of students with disabilities.  You will refine your capacity to both analyze lessons for entry points and barriers, and to appropriately adapt lessons.

You will also continue to examine the possibilities for integrating content areas in your teaching through a series of workshops on arts integration. We are fortunate to be able to collaborate with teaching artists from Arts Impact.  The folks from this professional development organization are committed to developing teachers’ capacity to infuse the arts into their lessons.  Their approach involves examining Big Ideas and concepts both within and through the arts.    A particular aim of this group is to explore how integrating and developing students’ literacy in the Arts might also support the kinds of habits of mind, student thinking and problem solving that are described in the CCSS and that are relevant to important learning outcomes in the different content areas.

Finally, Elementary endorsed candidates will continue to develop their content area methods knowledge by studying social studies and science methods.   Secondary candidates will develop their understanding of how to meaningfully integrate technology into their curriculum.

As you now begin the transition to the professional world, you will begin the professional development series that will help you to prepare and present yourself to the job market in a timely and professional manner.   Thanks to Maggie and Loren’s strong commitment and experience with preparing candidates, you will have several essential opportunities to develop your resumes, practice professional interviewing, and attend job fairs.  Your attention to deadlines, program expectations for paperwork and professional presentation of your application materials will be essential if you are to benefit from their efforts.

The assignments, as always, are specifically designed to help you to explore, reflect on, inform and ultimately demonstrate your understandings and skills.   Much of your work this quarter will be a collaborative enterprise, while other parts will continue to be an individual endeavor.  Effective communication and collaboration will be essential for your individual success with the various assignments and projects.   Deliberately and thoughtfully looking back at specific classroom experiences and lesson plans from your first student teaching will help you use this quarters’ foci to make useful adjustments and refinements for the next student teaching.   Faculty will pay particular attention to: (i) how you actively use opportunities to self-assess and refine your understanding; and (ii) how you show up for your colleagues to support their learning (i.e. timeliness, professional communication & collaboration)  – in other words how you engage in the practice of critical reflection and professional development in the context of professional learning communities.

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