Standard Eight: 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.
Artifacts & Reflection
Both of these artifacts pertain to Standard Eight: Collaborative Relationships. These artifacts are appropriate because they demonstrate my collaborative relationships with my peers from my teaching program as well as the Professional Learning Community within the school I student teach at in order to continue developing as a teacher.
The first artifact is a Course Report from one of my weekly Wednesday meetings with my cooperating teacher and her PLC partner. This artifact applies to Performance Indicator K: participates in collaborative decision-making and problem-solving with colleagues and other professionals to achieve success for all students AND Performance Indicator O: collaborates with school personnel in the implementation of appropriate assessment and instruction for designated students.
This artifact is appropriate because these meetings are designed to check in on each others' progress and pacing of the unit and address why one teacher is ahead or behind the other. We also set data goals for assessments. During this meeting, we set a goal that 75% of all Honors students will score 75% and 60% of all Academic Students would score at least a 70% on the Dynastic Cycle Novel. In order to set these numbers, my colleague pulled out the notes from the previous semester (pages 1+2) and looked at the data. They noticed they did not meet their goal and analyzed reasons why. We closed the meeting by making instructional changes (Mad Lib and required rough draft graphic designer) to the assignment.
This artifact demonstrates my growth as a teacher because I am building rapport with my PLC and learning about the importance of collecting data. By collecting data from the previous semester, my team was able to adjust instructional methods to better the chances for student success.
The second artifact are two examples of networking I have with my peers from my teaching program: 1.) My Personal Learning Network: Google Reader AND 2.) My Networked Research: Diigo. This applies to Performance Indicator M: uses digital tools and resources to promote collaborative interactions.
These two examples are appropriate because they are digital tools that help my peers and I collaborate resources. Although this is an earlier example, my peers, we have continued our collaboration through these networking sites as well as Facebook to ask for resources and bounce new ideas off each other. My Google Reader is appropriate because it provides networked space for my cohort as well as parents, community members, or anyone one wishes to follow my feed, view and comment on the sources expanding my growth as a teacher. Clear communication and transparency help decrease barriers between teachers and the community. My Diigo is also appropriate because the networked space, for my cohort and I, allows us to add and share relevant websites as bookmarks. These bookmarks relate to our social studies content area, teaching methodology, websites for primary sources and lesson plans, as well as current events and more. Through these networked areas, I will benefit as a teacher because I will have a strong support system and constant updates in my content area and teaching approaches, so I may grow and share my growth with my students.
This artifact demonstrates my growth as a teacher because the amount of new information and resources I receive daily is enough to help stimulate new ideas for engaging lesson plans and activities. Without this digital network, implementing new enriching ideas into my classroom might limit student learning. I am aware that collaboration is a necessary skill in the teaching field.