This first artifact in my "education" section of my portfolio is a written piece, highlighting my thoughts on using A.I. (particularly chatGPT) in the classroom, through the lenses of different learning philosophies. By applying the ideas of constructionism and constructivism to the modern usage of A.I.s for writing, I demonstrated how even older educational philosophies can be extremely useful in modern situations. Overall, I concluded that, when students use A.I. to do their writing for them, they are actually creating weaker responses than if they used background knowledge and previous experiences to inform their writing. 

As teachers, assessment is our bread and butter, something that occurs without too much hubbub and fanfare. In this artifact, I use my past experiences as a student and compare them to my current situation as a teacher to reflect on the very nature of assessments and how teachers use them. This writing piece is a one way ticket to my own views on tests, grades, and the use of them in schools. Through this artifact, I show my willingness to be critical and reflective of practices that occur every day, as well as use my experience with alternative assessment practices to consider how we, as a system, might better the idea of "assessment", for the sake of our students. 

Schools, like most entities that look at numbers to drive growth, love data. In this artifact, however, I reflect on the type of data one might see in the every day of a classroom, and the importance of using formative assessments inform instruction, not just summative assessments. While I did not know it at the time of writing this piece, this idea is something called "Street Data" and would go on to become an important philosophy in what I consider when thinking about the idea of data. Furthermore, this artifact demonstrates my ability to apply what I read about in articles, blog posts, and studies, and apply it to my practice in the classroom. Through this writing piece, I am able to flesh out how and when I believe data should be used in the classroom. 

A "wicked problem" is an issue or problem that cannot be solved easily, if it can be solved at all. It focuses on the idea that the problem that one may be trying to solve is so complex, that its nature changes the more you try to work with it, and that your beginning end goal may be different from the one you end up with later on.

The wicked problem I started trying to solve was the inherit challenges with teaching ELA to emergent bilinguals, as I express in this video artifact. This would change as I delved deeper into the ideas that revolved around teaching bilingual students, until I began to question my own biases and the biases of the education system. Inevitably, this lead to me completing my wicked problem research into the biases that other ELA teachers in my school may have in their practices, resulting in an extended video in which I present my research and explain its importance towards the idea of bias in the education sector. These artifacts show off my ability to change my focus when presented with concerning revelations, as well my ability to research, survey, and present my findings. 

In one of my very first pieces of extend writing in the online setting, reflect on what it is like to go from a novice in a subject to being considered an expert. This essay focuses on my journey as a novice and a failure when playing a popular trading card game, Magic: The Gathering, and how I gained expertise in it, to the point that I am the person most of my friends come to when they have a question about the game. 

The idea for this essay was a reflection about the mindset that someone who is a novice might take into a situation as compared to the mindset of an "expert". Overall, this artifacts shows my ability to learn, grow, and reflect on actions and practices that I one time considered to be beyond my reach to understand. 

In this artifact, I take on what I believe to be biggest culprit in poor assessments: the American medical education system. Primarily, my writing here concerns the practice of "shelf exams", a test medical students take at the end of each of their rotations during their third year. This piece goes deep into detail on what I consider to be the failings on the assessments, as well as how one might go about changings said failings.

For me, this artifact is a representation of my mindset when it comes to criticizing accepted practices and look for better solutions. Shelf exams have been around a long time and currently do not seem to be going anywhere, but for me, accepting something just because it has been around a long time is not good enough. 

This video artifact was actually some of the most fun I had making and creating in recent memory. The idea was that I was given a task (cooking and cutting vegetables) with a random tool (a spatula). While I filmed, I narrated my experience with using a non-ideal tool to complete a task, and how it relates to my students and what they may deal with on a regular basis.

For me, this artifact represents my mindset of acknowledging one's capability and potential privilege. While cutting and cooking, I was able to use the spatula, though perhaps not very effectively, to accomplish my task. This is not always how life works, as some people are forced to use tools not designed for them to accomplish things in a world that may not be interested in their convivence. This video became a turning point in how I look at accessibility of educational technology. 

My final artifact is a reflections I did focusing on the idea of empathizing with students who may have impairments that impede their learning (in this case, hearing loss). This piece focuses on the idea that it is easy, as a teacher, to forget that empathy is something that needs to be practiced frequently, not just when convenient. For me, this artifact represents how my mindset around empathy and putting myself in another's shoes has only been strengthened through my experiences with MAET. Experiences which have prepared me think how others might and use that empathy to better the world around me.