Standard #8 – Educators contribute to the profession.

Above is an image of my program from the “Dualing Arts” professional development conference I attended this past year.

The Professional Development opportunities I participated in this year were all very different and all incredibly rewarding. At the conference above I was able to go to workshops specifically focused on integrating visual and performing arts into the classroom. At the in house P.D. day at my practicum school I was able to be part of many round table discussions about the school community, developing a school action plan, and the school’s 100 year celebration. Finally, I expanded my knowledge and understanding of the gymnastics portion of the P.E. PLOs through a workshop provided by Gymnastics BC.

Within each of the above experiences I was able to participate in lively and intelligent discussions with other educators. The ability to learn from experienced professionals, as well as sharing my knowledge of contemporary practices and research was incredibly rewarding. All of the above experiences transformed my thinking and practice as a teacher in their own ways.

I feel strongly that as an educator I am not simply in charge of the betterment of my students, but also the betterment of myself and my colleagues. Vygotsky discusses the importance of “peer tutoring” throughout his theories. I believe this to be an imperative part of my educational philosophy for my own teaching, and for my own learning. For me, participating in these kind of professional development opportunities, both formally and informally, has been and will continue to be an invaluable way for me to contribute to the profession of teaching.

Standard #7 – Educators engage in career-long learning.

Extending Readers Theatre: A Powerful and Purposeful Match With Podcasting. By Sheri Vasinda and Julie McLeod.
From The Reading Teacher, Vol. 64, No. 7 (April 2011), page 486 – 497.

Above is an image of a paper I drew inspiration from in my teaching.

One of my favourite things to do is to incorporate my passion for theatre into my classroom. During my research for my practicum I came across an article that described how one teacher took reader’s theatre scripts and recorded them as podcasts. As I read the article I was struck by how doing this in my own classroom would be an excellent way to combine my love of theatre with technology in a meaningful way.

The article describes how a teacher used full readers theatre play scripts to do this with her grade three classroom. However, knowing my students abilities and interests I was nervous about using full play scripts. I was about to abandon the idea all together when I came across Win and Carl Braun’s Readers Theatre for Young Children in the library. This book contains a variety of poems that theatrically tell stories, much like a traditional readers theatre script. Poems seemed to be a much better fit for this particular class and for this particular assignment. Below is a link to the finished podcasts posted on the classroom blog.

Poetry Podcasts by Divisions 3&4 

As a lifelong learner I work hard to find inspiration from a variety of sources for my teaching. In this instance, combining an article from an educational journal with a book I found in the library and the school’s available technology resulted in one of my most meaningful instructional experiences.

I have always been a curious person who actively seeks out learning opportunities wherever and whenever possible. I was excited to see this as a valued standard for educators mandated by the B.C. Teacher Regulation Branch. Throughout my teacher education program I was exposed to a plethora of sources that I can turn to throughout my career when seeking out information and resources. I was also encouraged to seek out and create my own resources. Thus, I have further developed the skills to be a lifelong learner in my personal and professional life.

Standard #6 – Educators have a broad knowledge base and understand the subject areas they teach.

An image of the clue page that was part of Guess That Forest Critter Game Show I created for our Forest Unit.

An image of the SMART Notebook presentation I created as an introduction to my non-standard measurement unit in Math.

An image of a page discussing a Map’s need of a title from our classroom’s Mapping unit from our SMART Notebook exploration of the necessary parts of a map.

Above are screen shots of SMART Notebook interactive lessons I created that reflect the broad knowledge base I acquired to effectively teach in my practicum classroom.

Throughout my practicum I was given the opportunity to teach a wide variety of subjects. As well as having the chance to plan and implement multiple units within the different subject areas. Specific examples include a social studies/science unit on forests, a math unit on money, and a social studies unit on maps.

This experience has showed me that, as an educator, I may not already have a comprehensive understanding of all of the units that I end up teaching. The Prescribed Learning Outcomes are incredibly varied and extensive, so it’s hard to know everything about every subject I may teach. However, through researching, gathering materials, and teaching myself about the topic I can develop a greater understanding and passion for the subject I am teaching about. In the above examples you can see how I used my newly acquired knowledge on forests, maps, and measurement to create SMART Notebook interactive lessons for my classroom.

Part of my teaching philosophy discusses how I am not an expert on everything I teach and I aim to use this in my teaching. I believe that by showing my students my own processes of learning and researching I can help to demystify the process and make material more approachable for them. I believe, as Sugata Mitra does, that “the most effective educators are great witnesses, supporters, and structure-providers, but not answer-suppliers.” (SOLE Tool Kit). Therefore, my broad knowledge base and understanding of the subjects that I teach is often acquired alongside my students.

In future practice I will continue to develop my broad knowledge base of the different subject areas I teach. This is an integral part of simultaneously being a lifelong learner and educator (see Standard #7).

Standard #5 – Educators implement effective practices in areas of classroom management, planning, instruction, assessment, evaluation and reporting.

Lesson Plan – Leading the World (Grade 7)

Above is a unit plan I created with Mina Rohani for the Vancouver Biennale Big Ideas program.

Part of my degree was to do a three week Enhanced Practicum where I would help a community partner with the education portion of their program. I was able to work with the Vancouver Biennale organization in developing and implementing a cross-curricular inquiry based unit plan for a Grade 6/7 classroom in Vancouver. The finished product will later be published on the Vancouver Biennale’s education website. http://vblearn.ca

The first week of this enhanced practicum was spent in developing a unit plan called “Leading the World”. This cross-curricular inquiry based unit’s is meant to encourage student exploration of leadership on a community, national, and international level. Throughout the development of this unit I was able to use the of knowledge planning, instruction, and assessment I acquired throughout the year in my teacher education program to inform my creation of it. I am so pleased with how this unit plan turned out.

The second week of my enhanced practicum was spent implementing a much shortened version of the unit plan in a Vancouver Grade 6/7 classroom. This was one of my first experiences in being a guest educator. I was able to implement a variety of classroom management skills I’ve developed this year, including getting the attention of a group of students I am unfamiliar with and effectively facilitating open and respectful classroom discussion.

The unit went over incredibly well and I was pleased by my ability to create and implement a unit plan for a much different age group and classroom than my practicum classroom. For me, it proved that the skills I have further developed this year will be incredibly useful in my future career as an educator. Especially, in terms of classroom management, planning, instruction, and assessment.