The Teacher Performance Expectations (TPEs) descriptors describe the set of knowledge, skills, and abilities beginning teachers should have and be able to demonstrate in six broad domains and thirteen minor domains.
Beginning Teachers:
Apply knowledge of students, including their prior experiences, interests, and social-emotional learning needs, as well as their funds of knowledge and cultural, language, and socioeconomic backgrounds, to engage them in learning.
Maintain ongoing communication with students and families, including the use of technology to communicate with and support students and families, and to communicate achievement expectations and student progress.
Connect subject matter to real-life contexts and provide active learning experiences to engage student interest, support student motivation, and allow students to extend their learning.
Use a variety of developmentally and ability-appropriate instructional strategies, resources, and assistive technology, including principles of Universal Design of Learning (UDL) and Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) to support access to the curriculum for a wide range of learners within the general education classroom and environment.
Promote students' critical and creative thinking and analysis through activities that provide opportunities for inquiry, problem solving, responding to and framing meaningful questions, and reflection.
Provide a supportive learning environment for students' first and/or second language acquisition by using research-based instructional approaches, including focused English Language Development, Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English (SDAIE), scaffolding across content areas, and structured English immersion, and demonstrate an understanding of the difference among students whose only instructional need is to acquire Standard English proficiency, students who may have an identified disability affecting their ability to acquire Standard English proficiency, and students who may have both a need to acquire Standard English proficiency and an identified disability.
Provide students with opportunities to access the curriculum by incorporating the visual and performing arts, as appropriate to the content and context of learning.
Monitor student learning and adjust instruction while teaching so that students continue to be actively engaged in learning.
Beginning Teachers:
Promote students' social-emotional growth, development, and individual responsibility using positive interventions and supports, restorative justice, and conflict resolution practices to foster a caring community where each student is treated fairly and respectfully by adults and peers.
Create learning environments (i.e., traditional, blended, and online) that promote productive student learning, encourage positive interactions among students, reflect diversity and multiple perspectives, and are culturally responsive.
Establish, maintain, and monitor inclusive learning environments that are physically, mentally, intellectually, and emotionally healthy and safe to enable all students to learn, and recognize and appropriately address instances of intolerance and harassment among students, such as bullying, racism, and sexism.
Know how to access resources to support students, including those who have experienced trauma, homelessness, foster care, incarceration, and/or are medically fragile.
Maintain high expectations for learning with appropriate support for the full range of students in the classroom.
Establish and maintain clear expectations for positive classroom behavior and for student-to-student and student-to-teacher interactions by communicating classroom routines, procedures, and norms to students and families.
Beginning Teachers:
Demonstrate knowledge of subject matter, including the adopted California State Standards and curriculum frameworks.
Use knowledge about students and learning goals to organize the curriculum to facilitate student understanding of subject matter, and make accommodations and/or modifications as needed to promote student access to the curriculum.
Plan, design, implement, and monitor instruction consistent with current subject-specific pedagogy in the content area(s) of instruction, and design and implement disciplinary and cross-disciplinary learning sequences, including integrating the visual and performing arts as applicable to the discipline.[1]
Individually and through consultation and collaboration with other educators and members of the larger school community, plan for effective subject matter instruction and use multiple means of representing, expressing, and engaging students to demonstrate their knowledge.
Adapt subject matter curriculum, organization, and planning to support the acquisition and use of academic language within learning activities to promote the subject matter knowledge of all students, including the full range of English learners, Standard English learners, students with disabilities, and students with other learning needs in the least restrictive environment.
Use and adapt resources, standards-aligned instructional materials, and a range of technology, including assistive technology, to facilitate students' equitable access to the curriculum.
Model and develop digital literacy by using technology to engage students and support their learning, and promote digital citizenship, including respecting copyright law, understanding fair use guidelines and the use of Creative Commons license, and maintaining Internet security.
Demonstrate knowledge of effective teaching strategies aligned with the internationally recognized educational technology standards.
Beginning Teachers:
Locate and apply information about students' current academic status, content- and standards-related learning needs and goals, assessment data, language proficiency status, and cultural background for both short-term and long-term instructional planning purposes.
Understand and apply knowledge of the range and characteristics of typical and atypical child development from birth through adolescence to help inform instructional planning and learning experiences for all students.
Design and implement instruction and assessment that reflects the interconnectedness of academic content areas and related student skills development in literacy, mathematics, science, and other disciplines across the curriculum, as applicable to the subject area of instruction.
Plan, design, implement and monitor instruction, making effective use of instructional time to maximize learning opportunities and provide access to the curriculum for all students by removing barriers and providing access through instructional strategies that include:
appropriate use of instructional technology, including assistive technology;
applying principles of UDL and MTSS;
use of developmentally, linguistically, and culturally appropriate learning activities, instructional materials, and resources for all students, including the full range of English learners;
appropriate modifications for students with disabilities in the general education classroom;
opportunities for students to support each other in learning; and
use of community resources and services as applicable.
Promote student success by providing opportunities for students to understand and advocate for strategies that meet their individual learning needs and assist students with specific learning needs to successfully participate in transition plans (e.g., IEP, IFSP, ITP, and 504 plans.)
Access resources for planning and instruction, including the expertise of community and school colleagues through in-person or virtual collaboration, co-teaching, coaching, and/or networking.
Plan instruction that promotes a range of communication strategies and activity modes between teacher and student and among students that encourage student participation in learning.
Use digital tools and learning technologies across learning environments as appropriate to create new content and provide personalized and integrated technology-rich lessons to engage students in learning, promote digital literacy, and offer students multiple means to demonstrate their learning.
Beginning Teachers:
Apply knowledge of the purposes, characteristics, and appropriate uses of different types of assessments (e.g., diagnostic, informal, formal, progress-monitoring, formative, summative, and performance) to design and administer classroom assessments, including use of scoring rubrics.
Collect and analyze assessment data from multiple measures and sources to plan and modify instruction and document students' learning over time.
Involve all students in self-assessment and reflection on their learning goals and progress and provide students with opportunities to revise or reframe their work based on assessment feedback.
Use technology as appropriate to support assessment administration, conduct data analysis, and communicate learning outcomes to students and families.
Use assessment information in a timely manner to assist students and families in understanding student progress in meeting learning goals.
Work with specialists to interpret assessment results from formative and summative assessments to distinguish between students whose first language is English, English learners, Standard English learners, and students with language or other disabilities.
Interpret English learners' assessment data to identify their level of academic proficiency in English as well as in their primary language, as applicable, and use this information in planning instruction.
Use assessment data, including information from students' IEP, IFSP, ITP, and 504 plans, to establish learning goals and to plan, differentiate, make accommodations and/or modify instruction.
Beginning Teachers:
Reflect on their own teaching practice and level of subject matter and pedagogical knowledge to plan and implement instruction that can improve student learning.
Recognize their own values and implicit and explicit biases, the ways in which these values and implicit and explicit biases may positively and negatively affect teaching and learning, and work to mitigate any negative impact on the teaching and learning of students. They exhibit positive dispositions of caring, support, acceptance, and fairness toward all students and families, as well as toward their colleagues.
Establish professional learning goals and make progress to improve their practice by routinely engaging in communication and inquiry with colleagues.
Demonstrate how and when to involve other adults and to communicate effectively with peers and colleagues, families, and members of the larger school community to support teacher and student learning.
Demonstrate professional responsibility for all aspects of student learning and classroom management, including responsibility for the learning outcomes of all students, along with appropriate concerns and policies regarding the privacy, health, and safety of students and families. Beginning teachers conduct themselves with integrity and model ethical conduct for themselves and others.
Understand and enact professional roles and responsibilities as mandated reporters and comply with all laws concerning professional responsibilities, professional conduct, and moral fitness, including the responsible use of social media and other digital platforms and tools.
Critically analyze how the context, structure, and history of public education in California affects and influences state, district, and school governance as well as state and local education finance.
Beginning Teachers:
Plan and implement evidence-based literacy instruction grounded in an understanding of literacy-related standards and themes of the California English Language Arts/English Language Development Framework.
Plan and implement evidence-based literacy instruction grounded in an understanding of Universal Design for Learning, CA Multi-Tiered System of Support and the CA Dyslexia Guidelines.
Incorporate resource-based pedagogies and culturally and linguistically affirming and sustaining practices in literacy instruction (and in integrated content and literacy instruction), recognizing and incorporating the diversity of students’ cultures, languages, dialects, and home communities.
Provide literacy instruction for all students that is active, motivating, and engaging; responsive to students’ age, language and literacy development, and literacy goals; reflective of family engagement, social and emotional learning, and trauma-informed practices; and based on students’ assessed learning strengths and needs, analysis of instructional materials and tasks, and identified academic standards.
Develop students’ foundational skills, including decoding and encoding, text reading fluency and rate. (ONLY ENGLISH CANDIDATES).
Engage students in meaning making by building on prior knowledge and using complex literary and informational texts (print, digital, and oral), questioning, and discussion to develop students’ literal and inferential comprehension, including the higher-order skills of reasoning, perspective taking, and critical reading, writing, listening, and speaking within the discipline.
Promote students’ language development by attending to vocabulary knowledge and use, grammatical structures (e.g., syntax), and discourse-level understandings as students read, listen, speak, and write. Conduct instruction that leverages students’ linguistic repertoires, including home languages and dialects, and that accepts and encourages translanguaging.
Develop students’ effective expression as they write, discuss, present, and use language conventions. Engage students in a range of formal and informal collaborative discussions, including extended conversations, and writing for varied purposes, audiences, and contexts.
Promote students’ content knowledge by engaging them in literacy instruction that integrates reading, writing, listening, and speaking in discipline-specific ways, including through printed and digital texts and multimedia, discussions, experimentation, hands-on exploration, and independent reading.
Monitor students’ progress in literacy development using formative assessment practices, ongoing progress monitoring, and diagnostic techniques that inform instructional decision making.
Provide instruction for designated English learner students based on an understanding of comprehensive ELD, including integrated and designated ELD that is part of Tier 1 instruction. Provide ELD instruction that builds on students’ cultural and linguistic resources.