Professional Documents
Culture Documents
SPED Seminar
5/6/15
Students learn best by actively constructing their own understanding based on his or her
knowledge, skills and experience. This style of teaching gains and maintains student engagement
while using strategies that foster student independence, self-determination and self-advocacy.
Taking the time to get to know and understand whom each of my students is, is the key to
creating and maintains effective environments for student learning that suite the
social/emotional, developmental, intellectual, and cultural needs of all of my students. The
information gained from the knowledge of whom my students are allows me to use the
appropriate pedagogical skills during instruction, and the most efficient way to monitor and
interpret student learning. I believe knowing my students holistically is the only way I can
engage and support their learning.
I have been the afforded the opportunity to intern teach a k-2 special day class this school
year and have witnessed that by constructing student interest, curiosity and voice into the
curriculum their engagement, work ethic and advocacy have increased. This is most telling in my
classroom when it comes to the science discipline. For many of my students, Room 1 is the third
or fourth classroom they have been in. However, it is the only classroom that they have truly
been apart of and not kicked out of. Due to this, and their severe behaviors they have not had
much opportunity to learn material outside of the math and language arts curriculum, if that. At
the beginning of the year I asked what they liked to learn about the most. The majority of the
class said nothing. I attempted to preview multiple subject areas, watch them as they played and
listened to their hopes and dreams for the future.
This investigation lead me to discover that my students love to build things, they thrive
off of learning of systems work and then becoming an expert. My students want to get their
hands dirty and live the knowledge, not just have it read to them from a book. With that said, I
also have students that find joy in completing make workbooks. With all of this, I turned to them
and asked, Tell me what you know about science.
To prepare individual students to become agents of change who are active participants in the
curriculum building process, I believe that the education process should inspire students to
design, analyze, make and be innovative. Building with their own hands, designs that theyve
crafted which were informed by the learning that they sought after and then sharing that tangible
product with an audience, is a powerful component of learning. According to the 2013 Maker
Movement Manifesto, this is a philosophy I share with the Maker Movement and fits in with a
child-centered education.
The Maker Movement, tinkering, project-based learning, and integrated curriculums are all
valuable educational vehicles that make learning inspirational. They are tools that provide a
child-centered classroom that builds conscious and engaged students. I believe with these tools, I
can foster a safe, culturally aware classroom, which acknowledges and explores differences,
meets each child individually and will create dynamic, critical thinking, analytical citizens who
will one day create change in their communities.
My growth as an educator
This school year I have grown as an educator. Prior to this year I have never worked with
students classified as emotionally disturbed. I have proven that I have the abilities to meet their
needs, help them achieve their goals, teach them 21st century skills while making them feel safe,
supported and cared for. I realized that I am skilled at giving genuine and direct positive praise
while possessing an instinct that allows me to make educated and flexible decisions for the
success of my students. My coworkers and parents have given me praise for offering an
I knew the standards but I did not have a plan on how to approach each of them. This summer I
will make a plan for each grade level. I then want to take my students IEP goals and make units
that will teach and aide students in progessing their goals and standards.
Another area of growth for my will be communicating with all families consistently. I
made great strides in this area this year by meeting with families before school started and
making positive phone calls at least once a month However, I feel that I havent communicated
all student progress on informal assessments and the higlights of what is going on in the
classroom. To improve this I would like to have monthly newsletters that highlight the projects
that students are working on and include the candid pictures that I often take. The problem with
this is having everything translated. At my current location, availability of translators is limited.
However, I have built positive relationships with the people who can help me communicate with
my Spanish speaking families.