EDU 6918 Reflection

As a teacher candidate, I believe the process of self evaluation is critical. Teachers are evaluated according to the Danielson model, which asks teachers to reflect on instructional practices and make improvements after reflection. This is essential to becoming a proficient educator because the field of education is constantly changing as are classrooms and students. One topic where I see emerging competence is culturally responsive teaching. Coming into the educational field with a history in youth development, I found Sonia M. Neito’s article Profoundly Multicultural Questions (2002) helped build a connection between teaching and the realm of youth development. Before becoming a teacher candidate, I championed building confidence and self-actualization as key to success for students, as well as advocating for a more culturally responsive teaching in classrooms. While I applied parts of culturally responsive teaching, Neito’s article helped me to realize that only imparting students with self-confidence does not actually change the achievement gap. Her article showed me that in order to support students on the margins wholistically, it is essential to impart them with self-efficacy skills alongside the best curriculum available. This has great implications for student learning. This means I can implement both my knowledge of self-actualization and my new knowledge about my content area to increase student learning and engagement. I can plan units that incorporate standards, ELA content, and allow students to continue gaining self-efficacy.

            This emerging competence will propel me into the school year with practical steps I can take to increase my proficiency of my content area so better implement culturally responsive teaching. First, I have to pass the NES endorsement test. Studying for this test has brought back prior knowledge from high school and given me new knowledge that will help me increase proficiency in my content area. While I will not use many of the historic texts I am learning for my NES test, I hope the enduring ideas of comprehension and growth mindset will help as I begin student teaching. Second, I need to familiarize myself with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Because we do not cover all the standards, I am not familiar with all of them. While I know the standards used for both 9th and 10th grade at my school, I want to meet with the instructional coach at my school to go over why we select certain standards for each grade and why we omit others. Finally, I want to analyze the books we use for our unit at a higher level. While I have read sections and parts of our course texts, I want to read and analyze them, so that I can support students through differentiation and providing question prompts before reading. I believe that these three steps will help me to be more proficient in my content area, leading to a more culturally responsive teaching style.