1a. Equality

          Picture this: a young teacher recently refreshed from two weeks at home with her family.  She is re-charged and determined to tackle the second semester.  She has created a feeling of confidence and she is sure she will fix all of her management issues (HA!).  She returns to school, sure she has it all figured out.  Then she has her first encounter with a biology consultant.  Apparently, preparing for the state test is going to be much more difficult than she had envisioned.

          At this point in my teaching experience, I was all about trying to be fair in an "equal opportunity" kind of way.  I was trying to avoid the ever-so-annoying "but you let _______ do _______" because I was still in this mind set that, for some reason, I couldn't tell them no.  For this reason, if I gave one person extra credit, I had to give it to everyone.  If I gave one person an extension for any reason, I had to give one to everyone.  If one person got extra time to complete their test, I pretty much lost the next class period.  You get the picture.  It was a planning and time-management nightmare.  However, I made it work.

          I incorporated the activities that Ms. Smith (biology consultant) asked us to complete.  I copied the 55 page review packet for each student, which took nearly three hours.  I worked with the students both as a group and independently as needed throughout the weeks leading up to the state test.  I was determined to get the students to a passing level, with a goal of getting them to proficiency.  I knew they could do it, but it was so difficult putting in so much effort when I knew that less than 10% of my students were spending any time studying at home.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           In my opinion, establishing an open learning community is one of the hardest aspects of being a teacher.  Ideally, I would teach a lesson and each student would leave with a clear understanding of the information.  However, this is not the case. The students need the information to be relatable, clear, hand-on, visible, auditory, and exciting all at the same time. The frustration that arises is the work that I put in to try to meet these needs often goes unappreciated, and I am left with a room full of students talking to their friends instead of listening to the lesson I have tailored to meet their needs.  It makes the drive to differentiate less appealing.  However, for the sake of those that do care, I press forward.  

          I find difficulty in reaching every single student.  As much as I attempt to differentiate, there is always one student who is left behind that I cannot seem to reach.  It's not always because of a lack of effort.  I have three students that I can recall off the top of my head that have perfect notebooks, take all of their notes, complete every assignment from class work and homework to extra credit, and attend every opportunity to raise their grade; however, they are scoring below 50% on every single test.  I have tried and tried to differentiate and explain in alternate ways, but no improvement has occurred.  There has been no "light bulb" moment for these students and it breaks my heart because I feel as if I am failing somehow.  

          I set a high expectation, and sometimes I feel as if I have set the bar to unreachable levels even though it seems low in my eyes.  Recently, I have been working to incorporate more hands-on experiences and more relatable analogies to the content in order to close the gap between the achievement and the expectation for learning.  I have found that this instills confidence in my students.  They are able to understand their worksheets and complete problems on the board and assist their peers in a peer-teaching situation.  However, I sadly am brought back down to earth when I receive their test scores because I am forced to realized that the confidence displayed was false.  The students seemingly know the information, but they only understand it when it is asked in one particular, specific way.  If you add other words around the information they know and format it as a "state test" style question, it is as if they were never taught the information in the first place.  I will continue to work with differentiation, and hopefully I will find the information slowly seeping into the minds of my students with a minimal amount of outliers. 

 

1b. Excellence in Pedagogical Knowledge

     iv. Evidence of Student Learning in Science Content

          At the end of the year, I decided to have each student complete a project in which they created a children's book based on a topic that we went over at some point in the year.  Below I have provided two examples of the books.  The students worked very hard on the books and I was very happy with the outcomes!

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1d. Caring

          This semester, I improved my ability to accommodate tests to meet the needs of my students on IEPs.  Instead of simply removing two answers, I also added "helpful hint" sections in areas where I felt that they would struggle.  These included areas where there may have been difficult vocabulary or where a lot of memorization was required.  I found that this helped them with recalling information and, as a result, I saw some improvements in their grades.

          With the help of my inclusion teacher, I was able to give them more attention in the areas they struggled.  Also, my inclusion teacher helped a lot by giving them the attention they needed during review time while I was able to help during independent practice.

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