InTASC Standard 10: Leadership and 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.
When thinking of leadership and collaboration, one must take into consideration the role that they take in the classroom and the community outside their classroom. A teacher should take opportunities to communicate within and outside of the school community in order to promote learners’ growth and help develop the profession. To do this, a teacher must be aware of and respectful towards other people’s opinions and be open to new ideas for situations.
While at St. Francis Xavier, I had many opportunities to experience and grow in my leadership and collaboration. This came from attending meetings, collaborating with other teachers and colleagues, and talking and emailing parents. The collaboration meetings that I was able to be a part of and attend included ones for beginning of school year, first grade problem-solving meetings, Title I, and parent meetings. All of this collaboration and communication was to help enhance learners’ growth and development, and to help me learn more about how I can help the students be successful.
I had the opportunity to be in charge of emailing a couple of different parents about some behavioral and academic things that were happening in our classroom. Some of that required more attention, which then allowed me to take part in various meetings that were set up between various school personnel and the parents. In one instance, I had the opportunity to expand my own knowledge when collaborating with my colleagues and some parents when addressing one particular student’s needs.
Right at the beginning of the year, we noticed one of our students seemed to be acting out, even though it was only the first and second days of school. After contacting his parents about this behavior, we learned that this student had just been diagnosed with severe dyslexia and dysnomia and his behavioral issues may be stemming from his frustration towards reading. After finding this out, my cooperating teacher and I began to look at strategies that we could use to best help this student. We did not have to come up with these strategies on our own, but rather we met with the school guidance counselor and the resource teacher to learn more about what we could do to help this student. Due to being a private school, we did not have the same resources as a public school may have. We also met with the student’s parents to receive the information that they had and to share what we were doing for this student. One thing the parents shared with us was an assessment report they had received from some testing they had done during the summer. An example of what his report would have looked like can be seen in my Dyslexia Assessment Report artifact. During these meetings, I was an equal member of the group, sharing what I had observed and what I was doing to help this student.
My cooperating teacher and I gave this student some accommodations when it came to writing and reading within the classroom. When copying sentences or paragraphs from the board that were longer, we would do some of the copying for him and he would do the rest. This way he was still writing, but not so much that it was frustrating him. We would also take frequent brain breaks, especially during times when there was quite a bit of reading. Another accommodation that we provided was one-on-one reading when it came to taking tests. This way we could make sure he was able to follow with what we were reading and wasn’t jumping to different parts of the page when answering questions.
In order to keep his parents appraised about what was happening in the classroom, my cooperating teacher and I made sure that we were giving frequent updates to his parents so they knew what was happening. This started out as just my cooperating teacher emailing, but as I began taking over the classroom we collaborated on these emails until I was able to step into the leadership role to inform his parents how everything was going. Three sample emails from this gradual take over can be seen in the Parent Email Contact artifact.
Finally, my cooperating teacher, the school counselor, and the resource teacher attended the Decoding Dyslexia Iowa’s 2015 October Conference in Des Moines one weekend (I was unfortunately unable to go). The following Monday, we met and discussed what had happened at the Conference and what might be helpful in our own classroom. My teacher then sent me the links for all the presentations and videos that were used at this meeting (these are in the Dyslexia Conference Info artifact). Through this collaboration, we were able to get a better understanding of what dyslexia all encompasses and various strategies that we could employ. This leadership and collaboration with in the school and in the community helped me to take responsibility for my students learning to ensure learner growth and for me to grow as a teacher.
While at St. Francis Xavier, I had many opportunities to experience and grow in my leadership and collaboration. This came from attending meetings, collaborating with other teachers and colleagues, and talking and emailing parents. The collaboration meetings that I was able to be a part of and attend included ones for beginning of school year, first grade problem-solving meetings, Title I, and parent meetings. All of this collaboration and communication was to help enhance learners’ growth and development, and to help me learn more about how I can help the students be successful.
I had the opportunity to be in charge of emailing a couple of different parents about some behavioral and academic things that were happening in our classroom. Some of that required more attention, which then allowed me to take part in various meetings that were set up between various school personnel and the parents. In one instance, I had the opportunity to expand my own knowledge when collaborating with my colleagues and some parents when addressing one particular student’s needs.
Right at the beginning of the year, we noticed one of our students seemed to be acting out, even though it was only the first and second days of school. After contacting his parents about this behavior, we learned that this student had just been diagnosed with severe dyslexia and dysnomia and his behavioral issues may be stemming from his frustration towards reading. After finding this out, my cooperating teacher and I began to look at strategies that we could use to best help this student. We did not have to come up with these strategies on our own, but rather we met with the school guidance counselor and the resource teacher to learn more about what we could do to help this student. Due to being a private school, we did not have the same resources as a public school may have. We also met with the student’s parents to receive the information that they had and to share what we were doing for this student. One thing the parents shared with us was an assessment report they had received from some testing they had done during the summer. An example of what his report would have looked like can be seen in my Dyslexia Assessment Report artifact. During these meetings, I was an equal member of the group, sharing what I had observed and what I was doing to help this student.
My cooperating teacher and I gave this student some accommodations when it came to writing and reading within the classroom. When copying sentences or paragraphs from the board that were longer, we would do some of the copying for him and he would do the rest. This way he was still writing, but not so much that it was frustrating him. We would also take frequent brain breaks, especially during times when there was quite a bit of reading. Another accommodation that we provided was one-on-one reading when it came to taking tests. This way we could make sure he was able to follow with what we were reading and wasn’t jumping to different parts of the page when answering questions.
In order to keep his parents appraised about what was happening in the classroom, my cooperating teacher and I made sure that we were giving frequent updates to his parents so they knew what was happening. This started out as just my cooperating teacher emailing, but as I began taking over the classroom we collaborated on these emails until I was able to step into the leadership role to inform his parents how everything was going. Three sample emails from this gradual take over can be seen in the Parent Email Contact artifact.
Finally, my cooperating teacher, the school counselor, and the resource teacher attended the Decoding Dyslexia Iowa’s 2015 October Conference in Des Moines one weekend (I was unfortunately unable to go). The following Monday, we met and discussed what had happened at the Conference and what might be helpful in our own classroom. My teacher then sent me the links for all the presentations and videos that were used at this meeting (these are in the Dyslexia Conference Info artifact). Through this collaboration, we were able to get a better understanding of what dyslexia all encompasses and various strategies that we could employ. This leadership and collaboration with in the school and in the community helped me to take responsibility for my students learning to ensure learner growth and for me to grow as a teacher.
Artifacts: