Indicator 4.D

4.D- Demonstrate cultural competency when communicating with students, parents and colleagues and interact with them as co-collaborators in student learning.

Reflection

I am a big believer that home and school communication is the key to student success. Being an elementary school teacher, I feel that support at home, as well as at school, sets the foundation for the rest of my students’ school careers. I always stress to the parents at back to school night how important it for students to continue learning at home and I encourage parents to communicate with me whenever they have questions or concerns.

Something new that I created for the start of the 2020 school year was a virtual classroom. Although my students were coming to me for in person learning, I thought that it was important to have all of the resources that we use in one place so that they could use the resources at home when needed. With in my virtual classroom, I created a welcome message for my students and even read them a book to listen to before the first day of school. The main thing that I wanted to include was links to at home learning resources. On the bookshelf, I put app tiles that link the students to the website we use that enhance their learning. There are also some other generic resources linked as well.

For my first time creating a virtual classroom, I think that it went very smoothly and that it is very easy to navigate for my students and their parents. One thing that I have not been the best at is keeping up to date with new resources as they are introduced. In the future, I will strive to update my virtual classroom more frequently. I also feel that I have not stressed using the virtual classroom enough to the parents. I have done a great job communicating with them in other ways this school year but I would like make sure that they remember that the virtual classroom is always there for them to use at home with their children.