Below are guidelines for this section of your portfolio. When you’re ready, delete the text on this page and replace with your own content.

We have tried to emphasize in the program the importance of knowing and relating to each student well, and using that knowledge to inform teaching decisions (personalization). Likewise, we emphasize developing students into learning communities shaped by values such as respect, mutual support, commitment to thinking, collaborative learning, etc.

How have your students developed as a classroom community over the course of the year? Norms, values, and equity: What norms and values have shaped your community? How have the value and goal of equity guided you? Are there one or two key illustrations of that growth and how you helped to facilitate it?

How have you tried to build connections with students’ families and communities in developing your classroom community?

Examples

• Use material from your classroom community portrait from early fall to illustrate your starting point, and compare that to the learning community that has developed.
• Observations from your journal
• Learning plans which show your effort to develop the learning community
• Group or whole class projects might be effective in illustrating the learning community
• Videotape might be particularly effective to show students working cooperatively, or patterns of constructive whole group discussion, or some other aspect of learning community.