3100 Final Exam
Joshua
Harke
How do you support students
considering student mental health needs and the existence of bullying?
I
would support my students by having classroom activities that don’t single out
students with mental health needs or that are being bullied. I like my clinical
educator’s questions when they were talking about bullying awareness week. How
many of you have been bullied or know someone who has been bullied? I like that
she showed videos from YouTube, in homeroom, on bullying and how to be an
advocate for others. I would get my guides from the Pacer website for
antibullying. I believe strongly that the best advocates for students being
bullied are their peers. I want to nip any early signs of bullying in the butt
because I don’t want my students to develop trauma and I want a healthy
classroom vibe.
I
would also want to talk about mental health separately. Maybe like my clinical
educator did. They had a week devoted to it. Talk about what depression looks
like. How it’s okay to be depressed and that it’s okay to ask for help to get
out of it. I would show videos on depression and anxiety. I think I might even
buy fidget toys for my classroom. If a student is having anxiety, they can just
grab one for the period they are experiencing it. I wish fidget toys were
around when I was in school. So, I believe that letting my students above all
the conversations together, know that they can come to me about anything and as
I get to know my students, I could pull them aside and ask them what’s going on
today, just as a healthy check-in.
Tell me about the importance of
and strategies used for collaborating with families.
I
think the highest form of communication and respect goes to collaborating with
families. I think highly of my Clinical Educator, Ms. Heaphy, because she talks
with her students’ families on the regular and some students get more emails,
calls, or texts home than others. I like that she communicates with all the
parents of her students. She is a good model of what a teacher should be doing.
According to Joshua Hoppe in Featured Teacher, IDEA says that we are required
to communicate with the parents of exceptional needs students. I feel that
using translated materials and translators is important when exchanging
information with the student’s families. They should be culturally respected in
these regards. I feel that working with the parents on facilitating change for
their children is important and they should learn to be advocates for their
students. I know that it’s important networking with the parents of our students
should be seen as a good thing. They might have resources I don’t have, that
they could share. I would like to have age-appropriate guides for parents of
the students in my classroom. I would send home information with the parents
from open house meetings about how their siblings can help or what they need
from the parent too. If it’s kindergartens I would send home materials on
places their parents can get respite from so they can have time away from their
child to recoup or just fun places that are appropriate for their child. It
takes a lot of energy emotionally and physically to be the parent of a child
with disabilities.
How would you use technology in
your classroom to prepare students for standardized end-of-grade assessments?
I
would use the quiz sites such as Kahoots to analyze their knowledge as we’re
getting ready for the standardized EOG’s. I would research engagement
educational games that the students can use on their Chromebooks for learning
content needed to prepare for their EOG assessments. I would even play with
them, I’m very competitive. Side story, I played a quiz game with the students
in my resource English Language Arts class and won but Ms. Heaphy didn’t count
it. I think that engaging students where they are, i.e., video games and their
love of media. I was reading the article Boyles and Kennedy (2019) I would use
real-time performance data software that checks in with the students as were in
lesson or preparation for EOG’s. I liken this technology to there would be metrics
involved but also a simple check-in sent from my computer to their Chromebooks
like a pop quiz or thumbs up or thumbs down sent back to me. My Professor in
Child Psychology during everyone being online in the Spring Semester would
often have a pop-up for us to check in with her, for mental health or even
understanding the material. Overall, I would explain the importance of the
assessment but work with the students to make the actual day less stressful
when we got there.
Note. For this question, you
are going to tell us the name of the school you want to teach at and if it is a
public, private, or charter school.
Why do you want to teach here at
______________________, which is a public/private/charter school? Specifically,
I’d like you to tell me about how you think IEPs work in this setting and how that
has informed your decision to work here.
The
school I would like to teach at, at this moment, is Albemarle Rd Middle School,
which is a public magnet school. I would like to work here because I like the 6th-grade teachers and the Exceptional Children’s Teachers are amazing at what they
do. Ms. Perry the Principal is a good leader and has a great staff under her. I
think that IEPs work there as a normal middle school. I was able to sit in on an
IEP meeting with a parent. The psychologist and the special education teacher
were present. The parent was sent a letter in advance in Spanish/English so
they would know what to expect. They also had an interpreter available if
needed. This meeting happened just as I thought it would. I also noticed that
the Exceptional Children’s Teacher and Psychologist both had the IEP pulled up
and shared between them on their computers. They recorded who was present,
including me. IEP’s get updated every year or as needed during that year. I
was also able to look through a student’s IEP. My CE told me that things get
added to and the prior year’s information gets saved as a reference for the
future teachers. I found this relaxing and less stressful than I had built up
in my head.
This
information and the ability to look at an IEP plus sit in on an IEP meeting
gave me a soft spot for Albemarle Rd Middle School. I think it takes good
teachers as well as having the ability to listen to the parents during the IEP
meeting. It’s important to be clear and concise but then let the parent(s) ask
as many questions and talk as much as they need. This goes along with Joshua
Hoppe when he says that be an active listener. This is a time to learn about my
students from the parents about things I have an idea about but needed clarification
on. I think getting to sit in the IEP meeting and being able to access an IEP
was very important and pleasantly unexpected.
You are co-teaching using a
variety of models and finding yourself in conflict with your co-teacher. Tell
me about how you address this situation.
This
semester I have seen some great co-teaching between my CE and her co-teacher in
the English Language Arts inclusion classroom. If I were facing conflict with my
co-teacher, I might get discouraged about working with that teacher. I think
that if I am being stepped on because I’m new I would have to use the I-model
talked about by Wright, Echells, and Watson (2018) where I would say, “When you
interrupt me when I’m correcting the students, I feel undermined. I would like
you to support my judgment and after the class is over, we could discuss if I
handled it wrong.” I think that structure is important to a classroom, and I
know that I have a controlling tendency so I might be the one itching to talk
sometimes, which is a thing I’m working on. I think that respect goes both ways
to form a cohesive co-teaching bond. I feel that it’s a necessity to show a
unified front all the time when in the presence of students.
It is common knowledge that
students with disabilities are disproportionately identified when they come
from diverse backgrounds. Tell me about how you, as an educator, can address
the needs of diverse learners in your classroom?
As an educator, I can address the
needs of the diverse learners in my classroom by understanding their home life.
It is important to get to know my students and be culturally responsive. I need to be sensitive to the fact that in a title 1 school, most of
my students will be at the poverty line or above it. Albemarle Rd Middle School
is in the National School Lunch Plan that feeds 97% of its student
population. The demographic information also said that 5% of the student
population was white. In my resource classrooms, 100% of the students are
minorities. I would push my students to believe in themselves because their
motivation will drive them to succeed. I believe that I could advocate for
students to be retested with mild learning disabilities to move them from
Exceptional Needs classes or advocate that most of my students be in inclusion
classrooms that would benefit them. I want my students to be the best versions
of themselves at the end of the year. I believe in the saying leave something
better than you found it.
I can relate to
being a minority but not to a minority growing up in poverty. Understanding
that I may look like my students but not be in their shoes completely is a step in addressing their needs. Some students like Dr. Wakeman said don’t have uniforms
and she had to wash their uniforms and keep them for that student. I don’t know
if I’m that responsible enough to wash one of my student’s uniforms for them every
night, but I could gather information for my students’ families on services
that are quick to respond so that my student doesn’t suffer at home or their
siblings if they have them. I think that Salend and Duhaney (2015) used an
excellent quote that says, “the perspectives of professionals that minimize the
involvement of family and community members and view families as disinterested
in their children’s school performance (Harry, Allen, & McLaughlin, 1995)”.
As above I need to meet my students’ families and get them engaged in their
student’s educational life because to believe that families are not interested
is a disservice.