Standard #10:  Leadership & Collaboration.  The teacher seeks appropriate leadership roles and opportunities to take responsibility for student learning, to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other school professionals, and community members to ensure learner growth, and to advance the profession.

10(a) The teacher takes an active role on the instructional team, giving and receiving feedback on practice, examining learner work, analyzing data from multiple sources, and sharing responsibility for decision making and accountability for each student’s learning.  (Performances)

10(o) The teacher knows how to contribute to a common culture that supports high expectations for student learning.  (Essential Knowledge)

10(p) The teacher actively shares responsibility for shaping and supporting the mission of his/her school as one of advocacy for learners and accountability for their success.  (Critical Dispositions)

In my words: As a teacher, I accept my role and responsibility to my profession, my students, my colleagues, and my community. I will work well with students, families, coworkers, and other school professionals to create an effective and positive learning environment and reflect positively on my career.

Gallery of Artifacts:

Teacher-Parent Collaboration at Back to School Night

Plans for Back to School Night

Showing parents the Google Classroom sites

Introductory Letter to Parents

Co-curricular activity: The Mohawk Pep Rally!

My communication with the mother of one of my English 10 students who has a 504 Plan.

My focus for conferences was to appear confident, knowledgeable about each student, and give excellent eye contact.

Taking on a leadership role by giving my cooperating teacher notes and information on students to assist with her transition into full teaching at the end of my placement.

Observation 3: October 8, 2015

Letter to parents to introduce myself!

List of Artifacts:

Class Dojo - Have you heard of Class Dojo? This is an awesome way for teachers and parents to stay connected and stay updated on student behavior.

Emails Home - Communication with parents is huge, and when one of my eighth graders was gone for a week, I made sure to get involved with not only him, but his parents to catch him up on things he missed.

Introductory Letter to Parents/Guardians - Just like I did in my first student teaching placement at Mason City High School, I wanted to introduce myself to students and parents and send them something that would help us get to know one another before I began full-time teaching.

Help Me With Halloween! - To keep with the Halloween spirit, I created an extension activity that incorporated the holiday and student writing--Help Me With Halloween!

Concerns from the Community – Standards-Based Grading - "When I think about my school experience, I think of multiple choice and true-false and fill-in-the-blank. I think of a score at the top of the page. What kind of feedback is that?"

Hungry Hungry Hippos! - This was a super fun activity that FCMS participated in during their Dugout time--a human-sized, human-version of Hungry Hungry Hippos!

First Day of FCMS Professional Development - PD Days are on Wednesdays at Forest City Middle School. There's a shortened schedule, and students are let out at 2, which means from 2:15-4 is an all-staff meeting/professional development/teacher prep time.

Notes on My Students - As my first placement comes to a close, there's one thing I wanted to make sure to do before leaving: create a student note sheet for my cooperating teacher so that she knows a little about each student going back into full-time teaching.

MCHS Conferences – Round 1! - At Mason City High School, conferences are split into two days, two Tuesdays. The first night was October 6th, and I was thrilled to be a part of it!

Emailing with Parents - In one of my English 10 classes, I have a student with a 504 Plan. He struggles, and sometimes I'm worried that he isn't grasping concepts, despite me working one-on-one with him during class time as much as I can.

Homecoming and Pep Rally! - Mason City Homecoming Week: This was my first time experiencing high school Homecoming out of high school. It was a strange and nostalgic week.

Back to School Night - Tonight was Back to School Night, a night for parents to visit with teachers, walk student schedules, learn a little about classes, and share information about their children.

Introductory Letter to Parents - Being a new teacher this year, there were a few things I wanted to do from the start.

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