My Vision / Final Exam

My vision? My vision is huge… it has categories and sub-categories. So I will try to focus it a bit.
My personal vision for Secondary Schooling is a classroom where each student genuinely feels that they are an active part of a community of learning. I want my classroom to be safe, to be a place where students feel comfortable, and to be a place where social justice is taught and upheld. While this may sound idealistic to some, I think it is a very real possibility.

(See, I didn’t even incorporate writing or reading, my two loves!)

I want to be the best teacher I can, and that means a few things: I will be a life-long learner constantly works at improving her content knowledge. This knowledge could grow due to my going to literary conferences, reading books, being part of a writing community, or simply by conversing with my colleagues. By better myself I can then better my teaching abilities and give my students the best education that I can offer them. I want to incorporate as many new and thoughtful teaching strategies that I can; I want to use whatever technology I can and make the absolute most out of it; I want to be the best resource for my students when they come to me and ask a question; finally, and with the most challenges, comes my wanting to bring the community from around the school into the school.

One action that I will implement during this new semester is bringing in members of the community into the classroom. I have already begun to look into asking a Holocaust survivor to come and speak to two of my classes about their story. This would be part of my unit in which we read Night by Elie Wiesel. There are locals in the Oceanside and Vista area who are Holocaust survivors, but I do not think that my students realize it. This would help me to move public education toward my vision by showing this school that you do not have to spend money in order to bring outside sources of education to your school. If the community is actively involved and interested in what a school is teaching their students, then that community will more readily join up with the school. This also helps breed tolerance in our school, which correlates with my goal of promoting social justice on whatever campus I am a part of.

While I hope this happens, there is a chance that a speaker will not be able to come to our school, for whatever reason: This is a possibility, but there are always other options. Technology allows us to communicate with others, so if a person cannot physically come to the school, perhaps I can use Skype to bring at least the person’s presence into the classroom.

And it doesn’t have to stop at one speaker. I could find other members of the community who have a story to tell or wisdom to spread, and they could help to enrich the class experience.

I have several goals for my first two years of teaching. One goal is to get to know those who are in my English department. I think that as professional s we should all know one another, our teaching styles, and what kind of resources we have to offer one another. If there is a bond between colleagues then we can all work better together. I would take steps toward this by helping to find inexpensive team-building activities where all of the members of a department can work on their teamwork skills. If at all possible, I would also like to see about grade-level teachers working together, or even the entire staff getting to know one another in a simple name-game activity. I think that so many schools overlook professional development within the confines of the staff (not professional development for departments only). This would also help to be an icebreaker in bringing in ITUs and other interdisciplinary projects.

Once I have rooted myself at a school, I would like to do a team building exercise with rock climbing. Let me explain: it goes along with team building, but it also builds trust, confidence, communication, and relationships between the climbers (climbers being staff members). Climbing can also be a personal, as well as a professional, metaphor for challenges and success. I would obviously have to have the trust of the administration (and have waivers signed, ect.) but it would be worth it in order to develop stronger relationships within the staff. Depending on where I end up teaching, I could incorporate many parts of the community in this team-building process.

All of these goals, of course, are based on my vision of creating a community for the students. Students can pick up on the fact that some teachers are isolated in their own classrooms while other teachers are out and about, being part of the school culture. If every teacher modeled being part of the community and contributing to the culture of a school, then the students would see it: and they would react positively to that model.
In short:
These goals can be linked in many ways. First, you take those in the school and enhance their relationships with one another (new professional roles). Second, you bring in the community members and change up the way students perceive the way class is traditional taught (restructuring school, creating new curriculum paths): this will catch them off guard and you can begin to implement new assessments (comprehensive, accountability, & assessment).As a teacher, you must know yourself, your staff, and your stuff; this will make you a better and more powerful teacher [knowledge is power] (powerful teaching).

What my classroom webpage would look like

If I were to have a webpage for my classes, it would look very much like my Cooperative-Teacher-from-last-semester's webpage.

It is simple: homework is posted, the day's activities are updated daily, and any documents are available to be downloaded.

This is great for any kids who have missed class, or any parents who want to be informed of the on-goings of the class.