1. Teaching Diverse Students

This artifact was created as a part of a class at Trinity that worked with students at ELIM Christian Services to create lessons and introduce topics for a class on Community Learning with over thirty college-aged students with different needs and abilities. This class took place during Fall of 2021 and was taught to ELIM students completely online. I worked with along side my classmates and professor as we created lessors for different areas of our community each week. This lesson was focused on how to use the vending machine.

Knowledge Indicator 1H of Teaching Standard 1 states that the competent teacher “analyzes and uses student information to design instruction that meets the diverse needs of students and leads to ongoing growth and achievement”. This artifact demonstrates a clear understanding of the diverse needs of my students as I needed to adapt my knowledge about vending machines and its role in order to meet the needs of each of the students in the class. The artifact was designed with simple language, simple transitions, and times for participation in order to meet each of the academic needs of each student in the class. Representation was carefully considered in addition to the diversity of students.

This artifact demonstrates clear understanding of the academic needs of students in a special education upper college level course. Throughout this lesson and similar lessons in the class, I reflected on the diverse needs of the individual students using different strategies, to support academic needs; as well as, different ways of incorporating the cultural diversity of all students in the class and their background knowledge. During my semester working with the ELIM students, I learned the many different ways of differentiating for students, I learned ways of adapting to online schooling in a special education class, and the different ways that adaptations can be made to material to make it more accessible to all. Most importantly, I learned the importance of meeting students where they are at and thinking about how I can help them be the best they can be.

This artifact was created as a part of a class at Trinity that looked at children's literature and ways to incorporate books into the classroom. This class took place during spring of 2021 and was used to reflect on the many different stories read during the course and ways to understand characters, students and how to best help them pick a book or find books for in classroom use.  

Knowledge Indicator 1K of Teaching Standard 1 states that the competent teacher "facilitate(s) a learning community in which individual differences are respected." This artifact demonstrates a clear understanding of diverse needs of my students as I learn about them and connect our in classroom material to meet the needs of each students. This artifact was designed to show the connection students can have between books and their own lives. 

This artifact demonstrates clear understanding of relating and connecting with students in the classroom. Throughout this paper and many others in the class, I reflected on the diverse needs of all students and looking at many different books that could relate to them or better help them in different situations. During my spring semester in this class I learned the importance of reading more than just my interest and finding ways to see how others may feel not just in my classroom but as coworkers, family and community members.