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.
Rationale:
The first artifact above is of a presentation that I gave to students about the classroom. We talked about how to set rules, what is important, who I am, who they are, and how we will share the space together. This was made for the start of the 22-23 school year and was meant to introduce myself to the students and have them introduce themselves to me. The second artifact contains the core beliefs that I established for the science department at my school in the late summer of 22. When I got to the school, it was a blank slate to start from. There was no precedent, and there was no curriculum. I fashioned these core beliefs to guide the way that the department would go.
Both of these artifacts hit on the "positive social interaction [and] mutual respect" pieces from this standard as these artifacts were made specifically to help cultivate a common understanding and relationship between teacher and student and amongst departments. The Core Beliefs in Science artifact elaborates on exactly how I seek to promote "academic risk-taking" as a main driver of the scientific endeavor. Together, these artifacts should sufficiently demonstrate a desire for an environment that is welcoming and geared toward mutual respect and growth.
What I have come to understand through the making of these artifacts is just how important relationship is in education. I used to believe that the teacher need not have any relationship with the student and needs only to facilitate learning for the student. What I have come to find is that this is not totally true. Students need to know their teacher. The course materials are content; also, the teacher's life and mannerisms are content. If we want life transfer, this must take place through actual life transfer and not simply through words.