I believe I must enable my students to grow as students and people. 

           As a teacher I must support my students in their individual growth. I recognize that it is a priority to meet the standards and benchmarks. In order to meet these benchmarks, my student’s must always be continuing to improve, grow, and develop at all times. This requires designed differentiation during each lesson, meaning that students must be met where they are at that current moment in time and improve from that point. In addition to starting where they are presently, I must have high expectations for my students while also providing the appropriate amount of support and scaffolding.  An example of this would be utilizing activities which each student can participate in, while designing it in a way which allows students to take the information in at the depth they are ready for.

I believe it is crucial that I prepare my students for the future.

            I want to provide my students with every tool and open every door possible, no matter what path forward my students choose, I want them to be ready.  Providing these tools and opening these doors will look different depending on the age or maturity of the students. Achieving the goal level of preparation is multifaceted. These children are not only students, they are also children coming from a variety of backgrounds and are emotional beings who are part of a community. In order to prepare the students for the variety of paths they have to choose from they must know how to study, how to work as a community, control their emotions, and have developed their character. Many of these lessons can be learned by the skill being modeled and participated in. In order to learn about emotion control and character development my students must be held accountable and given the opportunity to practice better choices. The accountability and development will frequently begin in the hallway with a conversation and continue to grow within the classroom. These moment are some of my favorite times spent with my students.

I believe students will not learn effectively learn without a safe space and positive learning community.

           In order for students to succeed, their classroom must be a space which my students feel as though they have a relationship with and trust their teachers. The students must feel that they are in a space which they can be a risk taker, they must feel they are safe, and they must feel as though their peers will support their ideas and be able to build off of one another. The lesson design must be guided by student’s interests and skills which are directly applicable to a real world situation or final project. Creating and maintaining a positive learning community opens space for the students to grow and thrive. Providing and building this space takes time and intentionality. In order to achieve this type of environment my students will work together in varying groups, build off of each others thoughts with sentence stems such as, “My partner said…” or I disagree with what (name) said because…”, and when confrontation arises my students will speak directly to each other to solve the problem, etc. This type of classroom structure will give students a voice.

Overall, I believe that my students are strong, capable, and complex. In order to teach one must know, they must know their children as mathematicians, scientists, authors and so on. They also must know their students as people meaning they must know their interests, strengths, areas for growth, and everything in between. I believe that in order to be an effective teacher you must care, you must honest, and you must be consistent.