High Impact Teachers Believe Deeply in the Potential of their Students
My belief in my students impacts everything I do in the classroom. I build intentional relationships with students and support them emotionally as well as academically. This builds trust between myself and the students, and they are ultimately more willing to try new things and achieve things they once thought impossible. A lot of the students at my school lack confidence in their own abilities, so consistently supporting and encouraging them proved very useful. Students have been more accepting of harder work and student-led activities because they feel more confident in their ability to perform well. Even if they are still unsure of themselves, they trust me in pushing themselves out of their comfort zone, even if just a bit. I think a lot of this also comes from the behavior I modelled. I showed vulnerability and depth to my students, and they gave it to me in return. This trust and mutual respect eventually lead to the students having more intrinsic motivation and believing in themselves.
High Impact Teachers Produce Strong Student Academic Outcomes
Because of my strong student relationships and high expectations, strong academic outcomes are becoming much more frequent and commonplace in my classroom and the school as a whole. While there are always going to be outliers, students in general have shown improved study habits, improved quiz and test scores, and increased participation in class activities. A lot of the students found and still find the work challenging, but they are better equipped to tackle the work head on and get the results they know they are capable of achieving.
High Impact Teachers Foster Non-Cognitive Skills in their Students
Fostering non-cognitive skills was done most often in my Seminar class where we focused on social emotional learning, grade tracking, and reflection. This was also done more implicitly within the Spanish classes, as students were expected to uphold classroom expectations. These expectations included treating others with respect, turning assignments in on time, finding missing work independently, reading and following directs, etc. These social and management skills weren't always explicitly taught, but the behaviors I modelled and expected from my students helped foster their growth.
High Impact Teachers Create Educational Opportunity and Equity Inside and Outside of their Classrooms
This is something I did more implicitly in one-on-one interactions with students. I always make efforts to get to know each student's goals for their life. Whether this is encouraging college, trade school, or some other goal, I invest myself and my time into the things my students want to do in the future. I do think I could be doing more to explicitly include more anti-racist teaching, and this is something I'd like to focus on in the future.
High Impact Teachers Serve as Examples to Other Educators
I was able to serve as an example to other educators in my building both informally and formally. I informally collaborated with other teachers both inside and outside of TeachMichigan to discuss strategies from the program such as data driven instruction and tiered interventions. I formally collaborated with other teachers when we did instructional walkthroughs. These were formal "observations" where other teachers signed up to observe me teaching to improve their own practice. Teachers who signed up to observe me specifially opted to see the way I give feedback and encourage analytical thought from students during independent work. This comes directly from the work we did this year through TeachMichigan, as I used a lot of the formative assessment and tiered intervention techniques we discussed throughout the year in my classroom.