Collaborative Relationships

This lesson was created during my time student teaching on February 2, 2023. My cooperating teacher and I created this lesson for instructional coaches to come and see in order to give us better ideas for what to do next time. This lesson was on the main ideas of a text and incorporated an opinion piece that the students would complete. My cooperating teacher and I worked on this lesson together for about a week so that we can create something unique and effective for the students' success. This lesson was also produced in order to help the students stay on the right path for both main ideas and opinion pieces. This is because their summative assessment includes this topic, in which they will complete individually.

This lesson is of great importance because it allowed for my cooperating teacher and I to work together to do what was best for the students. As we took our time to make sure the lesson was what we wanted, we “use(d) effective co-planning and co-teaching techniques to deliver instruction to each student” (8N). We were constantly working together and building ideas off one another so that we can keep the students engaged and that they would grow as individuals through this lesson. We effectively did this by communicating, listening, and working together as a team to build the best lesson that we can make. During the time teaching, we made sure to include one another in the process and show the students that this was a team rather than an individual effort. 

From this experience, I was able to understand how important it is to work with those around us. As a teacher, sometimes you get so caught up in working alone you forget that there are those around you that can help you be even better. Co-teaching is a wonderful concept because it allows for ideas to be built bigger and for lessons to be more powerful. This is extremely important to my development as a teacher because I am going to be surrounded by many different teachers during my practice and it is important to create these bonds. These bonds are what will make my lessons better and for my students to succeed the way they are supposed to. 

This artifact is a communication log that holds onto the information that I sent to seven parents of  the students of my cooperating classroom during my time of student teaching. I did this for an assignment for my college course, but it was to be able to gain experience speaking with parents about positives and negatives in the classroom. In this log it shows the students name (pseudonym), the date that I sent the parents a message, what the message contained, and what was said to follow up with the original message. 

This artifact is of great importance as it allowed me to communicate with parents and become more comfortable with discussing problems and positives that go on in the classroom. By speaking with the parents, I am able to “establish respectful and productive relationships with parents or guardians and seek to develop cooperative partnerships to promote student learning and well-being” (8Q) by addressing the problem and then working together to fix this problem for the interest of the student. This log shows progress towards this goal because I was able to communicate with the parents and then follow up with how their student is doing. Creating this communicative environment is important for the success of the student, which is what we are all here for at the end of the day. 

This communication was definitely something new, but extremely beneficial for my development as a teacher. I was able to understand how important it is to build this bond with the parents in order to do what is best for their student. The parents want what is best for their student and of course so does the educator, so it is important to be constantly working together to reach this success that we are striving for. I also understood the importance of reaching out for the positives of students and not just the negatives. To constantly come to the parents with problems that need to be fixed, it can become draining and the bond with the parents will become weaker. But, to reach out when there are positives allows for parents to understand that you are looking out for their students, not just focusing on the negatives.