Standards for Clinical Practice
Submission
Description of Standard:
InTASC Standard 3: Learning Environment - The candidate works with others to create environments that support individual and collaborative learning, and that encourage positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation.
This standard addresses the approach to the external impacts on student learning. It covers the interactions between the teachers, parents and students. The classroom environments, which apply to the actual layouts and space utilisation, also the feelings created with norms and procedures. The classroom management, content and communication structures all form together to create an excellent learning experience.
Application of Standard:
In my classroom setting, we have four teachers present (including me), with each of us having specific responsibilities. Although the roles are different, we are all working towards the same goal and helping each other achieve it. From translation to co-teaching, everyone actively works towards the students' success. The same mindset is applied to our classroom content, environment and materials. We all bring different methods, which creates a diverse learning experience for our class. For example, we've introduced text-rich environments, differential seating, unified norms and used our "co-teaching" as social modelling for students.
The same approach is applied with our parents; all of us are engaged in the classroom and parent experience, with communication in WeChat groups being near-constant!
The most insightful part of having my local co-teachers is that it helps my foreign content remain culturally accessible and relevant to my student base, bridging the gaps that the language difference causes during the students first few months at school.
Comments:
Standard 9 - Britney Adams
We're all doing well in regards to professional learning, we're here and constantly engaged in it. Your examples for scenarios in which we learn is on point, the only mention I'd add is that we all need to be open to learning. As a teacher, how would you approach helping a colleague who doesn't respond well to PD?
I think it is important to understand the application of ethics in the classroom as much as apply. You've listed the 6 core characteristics, that feels like a modelling checklist. As teachers we need to model these, teach these and at the end of the day, if we've done our job, impart these traits onto our students.
Some resources for additional reading:
Standard 2 - Elizabeth Graham
Unsurprisingly I have more to learn from you than to offer. Your approaches to differentiation are both by the book and deeply rooted in that personal connection. This is precisely the structuring that I need to apply in my classes since my students are exclusively ELLs before even beginning to discuss students with SLDs.
With your ELLs, you didn't mention it, so I'd like to know how you make use of their L1 language during instructional activities? Also, having never taught Spanish speaking students, are there any specific negatively impacting schema from the L1 language? How do you overcome those, if any?
After thinking a bit further on the subject, I have a few more questions. With your students having this much diversification in their instruction, how do you align the assessments to ensure everyone is reaching the goals? Is there an over-arching goal that they need to achieve or is it individual as well?
Some additional reading:
Strategies for working with culturally diverse communities and clients (not on teaching, but some interesting content)
Standard 7 - Alexander Morton-Wright
Your ability to plan is shown very clearly in this post. You're explanation of the standard show's application as well. The backwards mapping approach to answering the questions is something I appreciate.
The biggest take-away for me from "planning for instruction" has been beating into my head with all the praxis studies. Making use of bloom's taxonomy ad gardener's theory of multiple intelligences. You can refer your lesson plans back to this in the same backwards planning method to check if you are meeting the requirements. There was an interesting example I saw while studying on study.com where they broke down an exam question list using bloom's taxonomy in sequence (can't share this link, unfortunately).
Some additional reading:
"Summary of Standards, based on Discussion:
Standard 1: Do candidates apply best practices to encourage student development to achieve student needs.
Standard 2: Do candidates provide culturally diverse and need specific applications for their lessons.
Standard 3: Do candidates build an enriching learning environment.
Standard 4: Do candidates understand the content and apply their knowledge to improve student learning.
Standard 5: Do candidates design lessons that engage students in critical thinking and different perspectives.
Standard 6: Do candidates use assessments impactfully to improve student ability while also accommodating students with diverse needs.
Standard 7: Do candidates plan evidence-based and impactful lessons, assessments, and structures to improve student ability.
Standard 8: Do candidates apply instructional strategies in a meaningful way to improve student ability.
Standard 9: Do candidates practice self-improvement, continuously using resources available to grow in their practice.
Standard 10: Do candidates work meaningfully in the cohort, provide resources, engage in relevant feedback discussions, and model growth.
Summary of experience:
Firstly this discussion thread has provided an additional wealth of resources. This is going to prove incredibly helpful when I plan ways to implement them in an assessable manner. The rubrics themselves are quite clear and specific, the wording can be a bit daunting, but the overall concept emphasises growth and student-centred learning. Lastly, the breakdowns provided by my fellow cohort has cleared up any misconceptions I had about standards, including pointing out gaps that I had with the understanding of the standard I addressed. "
Links:
Resubmission
I summarised my understanding of the standards into an easy reference list after reading through the posts by cohorts and the standards themselves. Unfortunately, this approach wasn't sufficient, so I have rewritten the summary and expanded it to be more in-depth.
