Partnerships - The teacher interacts in a professional, effective manner with colleagues, parents, and other members of the community to support students' learning and well-being.
Standard ten of the Idaho Core Teaching Standards deals with partnerships. My first artifact is a paper I wrote in my intern seminar. For this paper I had to talk about an IEP or some other form of meeting that discussed the needs of one of my students. Since the school I work at has a large population of migrant workers, and the migrant worker coordinator and I have been working together throughout the year. I choose to write about our meetings and the decision we made to help improve the performance of the students. This paper shows how I interact with colleagues and listen to their concerns about my students, as well as my commitment to my students well-being. The result of our conversation was me starting after school tutoring for students, as well as trying to implement more visual and creative ways to teach math to students, who may struggle with the language I am lecturing them in.
The second artifact is a paper on Zoroastrianism I wrote in my symbols, myth, and ritual class. This paper demonstrates my understanding of the needs and identities of different cultures and communities. I feel standard ten asks teachers to understand other people and the roles their culture can play into the students ability to learn and over all well-being. By being educated in many cultures and their practices, I feel I can interact and appreciate differences among members of the community, parents, and colleagues that may be different than me. By doing this I am embracing the ideas of standard ten, that professional interactions between people is important for the students' learning.
The third artifact is the forms I received on Dr. Seuss night. I participated in Van Buren Elementary School's Dr. Seuss night. At the school I read to students and parents. It was a really great experience and a fun night. I got to see how teachers interact with their community outside of school hours. By voluntarily participating in this activity I feel like I showed my commitment to teaching and the importance of interacting with the community around me. I felt that these artifacts all represent the commitment I have to teaching and getting to know the people within the community I will be teaching as well.