“All human beings are born with unique gifts. The healthy functions of our community depend on its capacity to develop each gift.”- Peter Senge

As an educator, it is my goal to ensure that all students are given the opportunity to receive the very best education and to obtain the highest level academically. I aim to close all achievement gaps and prepare the students for the rest of their lives. We as educators shape the lives of our students. My personal mission statement as a teacher is that we provide the students with a safe, vigorous learning environment that sparks an enthusiasm for learning. Ideally, I hope all students move forward to become productive citizens in our society; whether they go straight into the workforce or decide to further continue their education at the post-secondary level.
Within my teaching methods, I will be innovative in my use of learning labs, technology, and current events throughout my lessons. My goal is to make learning fun and enjoyable for students and inspire them to be their best. Technology is huge in today’s society. Students are constantly using smartphones, tablets, and all different types of communication devices. It is my hope to appropriately and effectively integrate the use of technology into my lessons in order to best support the learning needs of my students. Students will be shown how to use their smart devices as a resource and not a crutch as they discover the world around them. By using online virtual tours, new environments around the world will be unlocked for my students, who otherwise would never get to see them. I will use a combination of the student's Chromebooks and my own smart devices to help them sift through all of the knowledge at their fingertips and acquire the credible information that they need in order to better understand the subject of biology.

I use a wide variety of ways to assess a student's learning. For their day-to-day assessments, I use a series of questions from both the previous day and the day of to see how quickly they can acquire knowledge of the said topic. I use every type of question available, from multiple-choice discussion, true or false, matching, and several others. I then use end-of-chapter quizzes that are more encompassing and rigorous to really test the student and see if there are any weak areas that we might have missed in the learning. Lastly, we have a major test, that allows us to break down the data by standard and question, and truly gauge the learning process, and see how we might better prepare the next time.

As a teacher of science and biology, one of my primary objectives is to provide an understanding of the relevance of biology in my students’ everyday lives. I hope that they will leave my classroom, having found the knowledge they gained to be useful in many different situations throughout their life. I intend to do this by using relatable examples and current events that will bridge the content to something specific within their daily life. Specific examples are listed throughout this portfolio.