2. Developmental, Social, Political, and Cultural Contexts
Teachers of English language learners address the developmental, social, political, and cultural contexts of their students' lives and educational experiences. They comprehend how these relate to classroom performance and educational practice.
Standard #2 relates to my ability to build a culturally inclusive and responsive classroom environment, and how language plays a key role. Below you will find reflection essays on different topics relating to creating a culturally responsive environment, my ESL philosophy, and different strategies I have designed to help students understand language and texts.
Artifact 1: Building Background and Prior Knowledge (Attached Below)
This is a reflective essay from my Language Acquisition in Content Areas class, which was part of my ESL course sequence at Edgewood College. The reflections include my views on the importance on building background knowledge and using students' prior knowledge to help them understand language and concepts.
Artifact 2: Culturally Responsive Class Reflections (Attached Below)
This is a reflection paper I wrote in my first class during my course sequence. Reading it now almost a year later at the end of my student teaching I see that my reflections have not changed in my opinions of creating a culturally responsive, inclusive classroom. If anything has changed, it is that I have more strategies to work with and am aware that I can always research more. Creating a culturally responsive, inclusive classroom is critical for ESL students. ELL students need to be able to feel included and know their culture and background is acknowledged and respected.
Artifact 3: ESL Philosophy (Attached Below)
This artifact is my ESL philosophy I wrote in my last course for ESL, ESL Curriculum Design and Assessment. Looking back on this, I see that my philosophy remains the same. I just now, after student teaching, have more strategies to use to help my ELL students learn language and literacy.
Artifact 4: Russian Revolution Slides (Attached Below)
These are slides from my student teaching experience which covers information and activities from the first few lessons in the unit, which covered the Russian Revolution. This is the first unit where I took lead on planning and implementing strategies for all classes. In the first lesson, I ask students to connect to their background knowledge regarding "revolution". I also incorporate a KWL to assess background knowledge. I include a slide with a blank KWL where I wrote information students shared after they talk with partners.