8. Collaborative Relationships

The competent teacher builds and maintains collaborative relationships to foster cognitive, linguistic, physical, and social and emotional development. This teacher works as a team member with professional colleagues, students, parents or guardians, and community members.

Paraprofessional Letter

This is a mock letter that I wrote to paraprofessionals that I will have in my classroom one day. In my Communication and Collaboration in Special Education, we talked a lot about appropriate ways to interact and collaborate with paraprofessionals since they play a huge role in classrooms as well. Throughout the letter, I discussed my philosophy of education I have for my classroom. I stated clear rules/expectations. I also included responsibilities for the paraprofessional. I reviewed school procedures and what a weekly schedule looks like. While this letter was just practice and not for real yet, I tried to make it as realistic as possible and something that I would actually write one day for a paraprofessional I might have in my classroom.

This letter to a paraprofessional connects to standard 8, "This teacher works as a team member with professional colleagues, students, parents or guardians, and community members", because it was a way to collaborate with an individual I'll constantly be working with in my classroom. It was a good way to create a solid relationship right from the start since this would be a letter written at the beginning of a school year. Writing this letter and setting boundaries/expectations will help lead to a successful team.

From writing this letter, I learned that it's important to set expectations and roles for your paraprofessional(s) right from the start. This way you can prevent crossing of boundaries or not enough work being done. It helps with establishing roles and giving your paraprofessionals a better understanding of your classroom and the school as a whole. Writing this practice letter helped prepare me for when I'll actually have to write one for my paraprofessionals one day.

Parental Partnership

This is a parental partnership I wrote in my Novice Class, which was a pre-student teaching class. The purpose of this paper was to discuss why partnerships with parents/guardians is important to have as a teacher. I went over strategies I would use to ensure that I create these healthy relationships with parents/guardians. I gave specific examples such as creating opportunities for family engagement in the classroom. A parental partnership is a good resource to send home to parents so they can see where your intentions are and be on the same page as you.

This paper relates to standard 8, "This teacher works as a team member with professional colleagues, students, parents or guardians, and community members", because it was written with the intention to create and build partnerships with parents. Parents are a huge part of a child's education and are with them more than we are as teachers. It is important to build that solid relationship so that parents can advocate for their students and be involved in their education as much as possible.

From writing this parental partnership, it helped me reflect on what kind of relationships I want with the parents/guardians of my students and how I'll create those relationships. It also made me consider why relationships with parents/guardians are so important and how they can affect a child's education.