Standard 2: Teachers establish a safe, inclusive, and respectful learning environment for a diverse population of students. 

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ELEMENT A: Teachers foster a predictable learning environment characterized by acceptable student behavior and efficient use of time in which each student has a positive, nurturing relationship with caring adults and peers.

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• In Mrs. Giese's art class, attendance is taken by answering a question every day via a Google form. It's routine, students know what to expect and that they need to do this in order to not be marked absent. Once I started teaching, I also used this approach because I started seeing first hand how setting up routines and expectations help class flow much . It fostered a predictable learning environment, students were expected to answer respectfully and it was also a way to get to know students. This is just one simple example of how a predictable learning environment generates a more positive earning experience, but throughout my student teaching, I saw how important this is and implemented it in different ways. Making learning visual by posting and stating the daily objectives for the class. Clearly communicating and going over rubrics for each assignment, and explaining the why behind skill building activities is essential in modeling successful learning . Some questions were silly and quirky, some were more introspective, but it was always a fun way to start class. I've included a chart with some of e responses as well as a screenshot of one of the questions. 

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ELEMENT B: Teachers demonstrate an awareness of, a commitment to, and respect for multiple aspects of diversity, while working toward common goals as a community of learners.

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• One of my favorite lessons taught at Columbine Elementary was a lesson I taught with 5th graders in which I presented the historical exclusion of people of color in the European tradition of portraiture. My role as an educator is not to spoon-feed students the answers and connections, but rather provide the information so that through observation, they can come to those conclusions and make those connections on their own.  In this lesson, students chose a person of color that inspired them to create a tribute portrait of in the style of Kehinde Wiley who has reclaimed the European tradition of portraiture to present people of color in a different light and bring representation to a tradition that historically excluded them.  I think this is a great example of how I demonstrated awareness of, commitment to, and respect of multiple aspects of diversity. 

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ELEMENT C: Teachers engage students as individuals, including those with diverse needs and interests, across a range of ability levels by adapting their teaching for the benefit of all students.

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• The philosophy in Mrs. Giese's class is choice based and all lesson plans designed during my time at Silver Creek were choice based as well. The drawing unit I designed provided a variety of choices (between 12-15) to allow students to evaluate how much they could/wanted to do. Learning activities were of varying levels of challenge, Students could choose to do less activities/explorations to help them manage their time and abilities. Students could also choose to do more activities/explorations and choose how in depth they wanted to go with their project. I've included a PDF version of the Google Slides Presentation I created with all the activities and choices provided to students. There were several students in different classes with varying levels of disability and saw how the choice based model was beneficial to them and how approachable the activities were to all students. Some students took several techniques and ran with them, exploring through the various prompts, while others focused on the ones they liked or were intrigued by. Students with disabilities especially benefitted from this because it allowed them to take their time exploring, but students that were especially gifted also got to stretch and polish their skills through their explorations. 

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ELEMENT D: Teachers work collaboratively with the families and/or significant adults for the benefit of students.

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• ​One of the lessons I taught at Columbine included having students write an acrostic poem of their name to describe their personalities as part of the literacy component for the project. One of the students turned in her acrostic poem and it included words that concerned me. She used awful, hateful and annoying to describe herself. Due to Covid restrictions, I did not have the closest rapport with the student, but through Mrs. Cohen, my collaborating teacher, I learned that the school counselor had good rapport with her and that she had been working with her through other difficulties. The student had recently joined Columbine and was having a hard time making friends. I reached out to the school counselor and shared the student's acrostic poem to make her aware of the situation. The counselor reached out to the student and talked through her reasoning for the descriptions of herself. Even though I was not in the position to help the student personally, this is a good example of working collaboratively with a significant adult for the benefit of the student. Below is the link to the acrostic poem the student turned in.   

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