Secondary Educator Licensure Portfolio

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cxi5XaM7-LuivdbzvH-PANWTY_j1NHpkscgx_c8WQHI

Students in the middle grades are experiencing a very tumultuous time of life. Between the physical, emotional, and mental development adolescents experience during the middle grades, they need to know that they have support from the adults in their life, even when they choose not to use it. For this reason (and others), it is essential for schools and parents to be on the same page. Family involvement in the middle grades is an important first step in developing healthy relations between schools and families. According to Epstein’s Framework of Six Types of (Family) Involvement, the six essential elements of family involvement are parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making, and collaborating with community. Each type of involvement seeks to build understanding and breakdown the distance between schools and families. In doing so, family involvement makes families support of students’ education more effective while helping educators to better understand ...

Teaming is a central part of middle level education because of its array of benefits in assisting students and educators to build a experience. Most central to what it does, teaming helps educators refocus their instruction towards student growth, interests, and disposition. Through professional learning communities, educators can gain opportunities to enhance their insttruction through learning from and working more closely with others to produce better instruction more centered on students’ interests and standards based curriculum. Teaming allows teachers to collaborate in decision making and assessment while considering how best to serve their students. At the middle level, students’ work in disciplinary content can stretch beyond the knowledge of individual educators. To provide the best possible education for students, teachers need to be educated and tested in the disciplines they design curriculum for. Through a teaming environment, educators are able to serve as discipline e...

During the panel discussion about youth activism surrounding the book Same Sun Here, the two girls and the middle school educator on the panel discussed the importance of and challenges faced by youth activists. In the short question and answer dialogue that transpired, the audience was able to hear from a few perspectives encompassing youth activism. One of the two girls is heavily involved with environmental reforms. The other was a member of the social activism group Muslim Girls Making Change, which uses slam poetry as a medium to challenge people’s perspectives and expose truths about social issues. The last panel member was a teacher who’s cutting edge pedagogical approach uses youth activism to encourage his students to find their voice and use it to enact positive changes in the world. Each of the panel members had an interesting perspective to share which helped to further my considerations of youth activism. Through sharing their experiences as notable youth activists, t...

This past week I had the opportunity to teach two mini lessons from one of my content areas to a small group of my peers. On Tuesday, I utilized the twenty minute period to begin an exploration of the seasons.  We looked at how temperature varies between the northern and southern hemisphere (in particular how the seasons are six months apart in each hemisphere). On Thursday, we spent some time clarifying vocabulary related to rigid transformations of 3 dimensional bodies while reviewing the relationships we had identified and discussed on Tuesday. The experience was extremely beneficial in helping me to develop a better understanding of how educators must adjust their curriculum from one day to the next. As a future educator, teaching back to back lessons manifested the importance of flexibility and assessment.  In my first lesson, I had students complete an entrance ticket and a journal prompt. When I assessed these two formative assessments, it showed me that my studen...

In my education course ED 343 Literacy in Middle and Secondary Education, I worked on a short fifteen minute vocabulary lesson that could be used within the 7th grade integrated earth science and mathematics unit I am developing. Below are the lesson plan, Nearpod presentation, and recording from the lesson I produced and taught. Rotate and Revolve Lesson Plan Nearpod - Revolve and Rotate  (The access code is "ONDTA".) Performance Criterion: 2(a) The teacher designs, adapts, and delivers instruction to address each student’s diverse learning strengths and needs and creates opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning in different ways. 2(g) The teacher understands and identifies differences in approaches to learning and performance and knows how to design instruction that uses each learner’s strengths to promote growth. In my lesson design and development, I focused on the assessment slogan "multiple times multiple ways".  In previous short l...

During my education courses Curriculum in Middle/Secondary Education and Literacy in Middle/Secondary Education, we have spent some time over the past few weeks discussing the impact and implications of adding technology within the classroom to produce a more dynamic learning environment. In doing so we produced several mock documents to inform parents and guardians as a school might when first incorporating a new personal technology into the classroom. In particular, I helped draft a mock letter to families detailing a fictional iPad initiative and a fictional technology contract for parents and students. Both of these items encouraged me to see the issue of technology through multiple lenses with an understanding of the diverse needs and concerns of individuals in my community. Personally these projects manifested the growing tolerance I've developed with the concept of digital learning.  While I recognize that there are several serious drawbacks and compromises with technology...