Standard 2: Respectful Educational Environments
Teacher leaders model leadership by establishing a positive and productive environment for a diverse population of students, their families, and the community. Teachers are knowledgeable about cultures and global issues and how they are contextualized locally. Teachers help colleagues develop effective strategies for students with special needs. They encourage positive, constructive relations among colleagues and students. Indicators are:
- Facilitate the development of inviting, respectful, supportive, inclusive, and flexible educational communities.
- Create collaborative partnerships with families, schools and communities to promote a positive school culture.
- Facilitate and model caring and respectful treatment of individuals within the learning community.
- Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of diverse world cultures and global issues.
- Encourage high expectations for all students.
- Collaboratively design and implement curriculum and instruction that is responsive to learner differences.
Context
In Dr.Schlagal's class entitled Severe Reading Disability (RE 6735), I was asked to read research which pertained to the children who have difficulty with learning to read and then an develop action research project to benefit these students.
Rational
This research project was designed to increase fluency for my sixth grade students who struggle to read text with adequate speed and accuracy. These students are reading below sixth grade reading level. In addition to the focus on the differences in the learner's reading ability which is necessary for implementing instruction that is responsive for my students. I chose to use poetry as a text for repeated reading. The poems read during the course of this study shared the theme of perseverance and are considered multicultural poetry and promoted a positive classroom climate which helped my students understand diverse cultures and explore issues faced by various people. Throughout this study, my expectation was all students would make gains in their reading speed.
Literacy Through Photography Project
Context
The Literacy Through Photography Project was an assignment from Dr. Greene's Teaching the Language Arts course (RE 5130). This project required students to learn a few photography skills and put their knowledge to use by actually taking photographs.
Rational
Sixth grade students developed a memoir of their lives. Students were asked to reflect on their culture, family, personal identity and values while developing their memoir. This assignment facilitated the development of an inviting, respectful and inclusive classroom environment because all of my students where required to reflect, write and share a experience from their life. Students used photographs of the past to help develop memoirs and find details to add to their memoirs. 21st Century Literacy Skills were heavily incorporated into this project through the use of Glogster (an online digital poster which enables the user to embed video and audio), create a pre-writing using Inspiration (a digital webbing tool), and edit photographs using a free online photo editing software. The addition of these technological tools helped to make this assignment responsive to the learning differences in my classroom because my students who struggle with typical classroom assignment because they often lack strong linguistic intelligence skills (according to Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences). Instead, this memoir project employed the visual and intrapersonal intelligences.