The competent teacher structures a safe and healthy learning environment that facilitates cultural and linguistic responsiveness, emotional well-being, self-efficacy, positive social interaction, mutual respect, active engagement, academic risk-taking, self-motivation, and personal goal-setting.
Artifact 1
The following is my response to the IRIS module "Classroom Behavior Management (Part 1): Key Concepts and Foundational Practices" that I did for my student teaching seminar the last semester of my senior year. Our assignment was to work through the module on classroom behavior management and respond to the questions at the end of the module. We were also supposed to write down our initial thoughts about classroom behavior management and then our revised thoughts after going through the module.
Illinois Professional Teaching Standard 4G states that the competent teacher "knows strategies to implement behavior management and behavior intervention planning to ensure a safe and productive learning environment." This IRIS module walked me through the process of coming up with a behavior management plan, as well as when and how to best implement it. The module emphasized working with students to create a behavior management plan so that students are aware of the rules and the consequences, and also because students are less likely to break rules when they were part of making said rules.
I learned that it's important to come up with a behavior management plan early before students even enter the classroom. Once students are in the classroom, teachers can then work with the students to fine-tune the rules and procedures for the classroom. I also learned that it's important to keep students' cultural identities in mind when coming up with behavior management plans because some behaviors that may be considered rude or disrespectful in one culture may in fact be considered the exact opposite in another culture. Assuming everyone, regardless of culture, should always act exactly the same is detrimental to both teacher-student relationships as well as teacher-parent relationships and can only lead to misunderstandings and hurt feelings and relationships.
Artifact 2
The above video is a recording of a presentation I did for my Educational Psychology class in the spring of my junior year. The project asked us to choose an issue in education and research both sides of the issue before settling on our own stance based on our research. I chose ability grouping mostly because I only had a vague idea of what that was. We were also told to explain how our research and the chosen issue would play a role in our own teaching.
Illinois Professional Teaching Standard 4C states that the competent teacher "understands how to help students work cooperatively and productively in groups." During my research for this project, I found that the productivity and success of student groups can be sometimes determined by the makeup of the students within the group. For example, pairing higher-achieving students with lower-achieving students not only helps the lower-achieving students but also helps the higher-achieving students; one of the best ways to improve in something is to teach it to someone else. That being said, teachers can't just throw such students together and assume it will all work out. The teacher is still very much needed to ensure that everything goes smoothly and to offer students any assistance they need to help them feel secure and confident in their abilities. Pairing students or creating student groups also requires individual knowledge of each student within a class. A teacher needs to know who this student gets along best with, what student distracts this student, what two students can't stand each other, etc. In order to effectively create productive groups, a teacher needs to know not only a student's knowledge and skill, but also their personality and their relationships with other students in the classroom.
One thing that I learned is that ability grouping, in theory, has good intentions but when actually put into practice, it appears to not be as effective, especially for lower-achieving students. Ability grouping, according to my research, is based on the assumption that all students within a group are exactly the same and therefore learn the same and have the same ability level. This is incredibly inaccurate; humans are unique and interesting individuals with their own skills and ideas and areas of expertise. Just because two students score the same on a test does not mean that they are at the same ability level.