Question 1: Focus on “educating the whole child”. What does this look like in your classroom and on your site? Consider opportunities to foster and reinforce Social Emotional Learning, inclusive and diverse learning environments, and vehicles for student advocacy.
Educating the whole child is difficult to describe as a new teacher. I do my best to provide a good example to my students and keeping my distance learning classes loose and flexible. I hope that helps with their social emotional needs. A teacher shouldn't be a taskmaster and treating their students as employees. In order to get the best out of their students, a teacher needs to be empathetic and understanding to their needs. In order to educate the whole student, a teacher needs to be involved in creating an inclusive environment for every student. Things that contribute to an inclusive environment include using scaffolds for student learning levels, ELD support and students that have 504s or other personal struggles. Other things a teacher can do to foster an inclusive, diverse learning environment is providing options to demonstrate student learning that work best for how a student learns. Question 2: Reflect on your overall experience with this course. What changes will you make as a result of the work that you have done? The changes I will make to my course in the future as the result of the work I have done is create lessons and an environment that prepares students for college and careers. I will consider adding 21st century standards to college and career readiness standards when designing lessons. As a teacher it is our responsibility to prepare students for the future beyond the school day. 21st century skills will help students navigate life in whatever they decide to pursue when it comes to colleges and careers. Overall I feel this class helped understand that the way school is designed doesn't help the student. A teacher needs to realize that they have the abiltity to work around this obstacle by providing lessons designed to challenge but also prepare them for the future.
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Being digitally literate means to not just to able to use technology such as PCs but to also being able to understand how to use a variety of websites, programs, and applications. Digital literacry is also about knowing how to communicate digitally and professionally when using email and school spaces. Digital literacy is also about knowing how to use the internet and technology for research, producing audio and visual projects, typing skills, grammar and composition. It's about knowing how to communicate creatively using a variety platforms, tools, formats, styles and the digital media that will help best achieve their goals.
Digial citizenship contributes to digital literacy because a student must know how to properly communicate with peers and general public in a way that is successful. Students exhibiting poor behavior in digital spaces will affect their college and career readiness as they are showing they don't know how to properly act. Digital citizenship comes with practice and it starts with becoming digitally literate. Being a digital citizen is a reflection of character that colleges and careers look for. Digital citizenship means knowing the rights and responsibilities of living in an interconnected world and how to act in ways that are safe, legal, and ethical. Both of these contribute to college and career readiness as using a computer is essential in both environments and for the future. Learning these skills early will better prepare students for college, career and develop professional social skills they need. One new thing I can commit to trying in my classroom to foster and reinforce family and community connections is to have some days a month for social emotional needs and checkins with students and to take it slow with the curriculum so students don't feel overwhelmed in class. That will help students to be able to perform better in classwork and hopefully lead to more participation as their needs are being met. I will also invite presentations by the Mental Health and Behavior services department in class so students know more about these services and know how to access them. I really want to have a supportive environment at school for students and I think these would be great ways to reach the students and help with their social and emotional needs. I believe students can't best function in a classroom when they are preoccupied with issues beyond the scope of the classroom. This is something we all struggle with as people and it is the teacher's responsibilty to not add to the stress but assist students in learning how to best manage these issues. If they don't learn to manage in school then this could lead to further problems in college and career settings. Teachers need to set the example with their behavior and compassion so hopefully students can learn subconsciously or even consciously how to cope with life's difficulties. How will this analysis and discussion of the 21st Century Skills impact your intentional lesson planning and classroom instruction?
The analysis of 21st Century Skills will impact my lesson planning and classroom instruction because these are important skills to consider that students need to learn and develop. These skills will also help me as teacher be more thoughtful and intentional in my lesson planning. A few of the skills really stand out for teaching English and Creative Writing are Critical thinking, Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, Media literacy, and Technology literacy. I have learned throughout this pandemic to use technology for my lessons and instruction and by doing so I am preparing my students to use it as well. This will help them become technologically literate. Technology as well gives students more opportunity to be creative and think critically when it comes to learning to work in an environment around technology. It is also a life skill and a part of everyday life that students need to be used to and know how to work with technology. There are also many options for them to engage with the material with interactive lessons, audio and video, access to research and educational material, scaffolds, learning professional electronic communication, and collaboration with their classmates. I do believe there is some use to using physical copies of materials for lessons, but I'm no longer going to depend on that as I did in the past. Having students be literate with technology will prepare them for college and careers in the future. I think as teachers preparing our students for future success is one of the most important things we can do and 21st Century Skills provide that. The barriers some students experience that prevent college in career readiness is lack of school experience that prepares them for college. Many of the students in my district are have struggled with fragmented learning and skills. They haven't been trained to be college and career ready. They have come to high school missing basic school skills and we as teachers have to teach to that level and not to an imagined expected level that they won't be at until later in life. What I have done to help students in my instruction and environment is to use materials that are tailored to their reading and writing abilities. Many of my students read and write at a middle school level or lower. I need to provide them the foundation of the middle school concepts before going to higher level work or they won't understand it. As a teacher I need to fill in the gaps of learning so they can understand the concepts instead of placing more pressure on them and having unrealistic expectations that don't match the data of their abilities. The school has tutoring and credit recovery courses. I offer after school tutoring and email questions and answers to help and make myself as available as I can. Changes I can make are to have a schedule of after class help to support students who are struggling and offer alternative assignments. Removing these barriers will help students learn at a level that is more equitable to them and build a better relationship with students because it shows that teachers are working to best help the students.
Our department chooses a set of eight standards to focus on throughout the school year. I do believe the standards we choose will benefit student literacy. These standards include knowing the main idea of the text, using evidence to support a claim, elaboaration, and description in writing to name a few. I think these standards students need to have not just in a school setting but to help them understand what it is they are reading and able to explain and defend their ideas with facts. Nowadays arguments without facts have hurt critical thinking skills and education. These skills students would help them better prepare how to write papers for college, how to understand business documents when they're older and looking to buy a car, house, starting a business and much more. I feel these basic literacy standards will help them throughout their life and career. Reading and writing is a foundational skill that will be important for students in all their classes, post high school, college and careers.
I believe there are things that all students need to learn. I think universally all students no matter what their academic level is that they need to learn responsiibilty, citizenship in the world and with others, communication, and social and emotional skills. I think those skills will ultimately be the most important things that students will carry with them throughout their lives. The history of education does contribute much to how we measure post secondary success. For example I noticed the anti-intellectualism movement as it has taken hold of this country and the distrust of intellect and critical thinking. This also goes with inequality of education in poor and diverse areas. It has been a struggle with integrated schools and the racist policies that have made equity a major issue in the education of students of non-white backgrounds. We see this history still being a part of us today with all the issues in the world and they have been highlighted heavily when they were once quietly ignored by those who weren't paying attention of who it didn't affect. I did notice in one presentation that Thomas Jefferson believed education would help with a better democracy. That is another issue that has been highlighted by the unrest in this country and that the uneducated and uninformed are in positions in power. Take away education, you take away power from the people.
School is for personal growth and well-being and to provide resources to the community.
I always tell my students as well that school is practice. It is practice being in an environment that isn’t the home or with friends, it is practice of being self-responsible, and being in an unfamiliar environment with others you may not get along with and learning to communicate and collaborate with classmates and teachers. School is about building relationships and with peers and going through a shared experience. School is an opportunity for students to build skills they can use in a professional environment but also build social and emotional skills. School is a place where students can experiment, research, and question in an environment that encourages curiosity and problem solving. As a teacher and in this distance learning environment, we have to be more than a teacher. We need to be understanding and flexible as it can be challenging to engage with students. We have to be a positive influence and figure because there is so much turmoil and uncertainty and we have to be a stable figure to help students navigate these stressful times. |
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