TEP Artifacts

·        TEP Program Goal :  Pedagogical sensitivity

Check, Connect and Reflect (CCR) time with students at Adele

One of the most special aspects of the Adele School for Special Children is how involved the teachers are with the Champions for Health program. This was the ninth year of the program and Adele has been a part of the program from the start. On the first day I arrived at the school, I had a meeting with the principal and most of the teachers about what they want to see from us this year. They requested a few specific lessons but asked us to watch the students at recess to see if there was something that we could see they needed improvement on.

It didn't take long to realize there was a problem with sharing the swings on the playground. Because all of the students have some sort of difficulty, it is fascinating to see how they communicate with each other and in this particular, it wasn't working. The youngest group of students- who are also the least verbal- were fighting and pushing constantly to get a turn on the two swings. Immediately I knew I needed to fix this, and a quick redirection of behaviour wasn't going to cut it.

I started with making my lessons for the older high functioning students themed around responsibility. We discussed what this looked like and brainstormed what they can do around the school to be more responsible. I then led them out to the playground and told them the situation with the younger students. Together we came up with a plan that at least one of the students from this class would stand by the swings during break time and help the younger students decide when it would be fair for the next person to have a turn. Then I had a lesson with the younger students centered around using "nice hands." We did a variety of activities that showed what  "nice hands" looked like and "bad hands" looked like. I used lots of visuals and prompts and eventually the students were showing me their own ideas of what "good hands" should look like. When I took the younger students to the swing set, I had each of them demonstrate what "good hands" looked like and break time was a breeze after that.

I use this example with this program goal because it took a lot of patience and knowledge of how to break down instructions to get the results I was looking for. Working with students with special needs has always been extremely fulfilling for me but working in the environment of Adele was way beyond what I could have imagined. Having the skills and confidence I had picked up on my long practicum had me good and ready for what the island threw at me.

Peace with the swings at Adele

TEP Program Goal : Integration of Knowledge and Practice

My Addictive substances unit was my favourite unit that I taught during my practicum. I started with notes and information on six addictive substances that are the most easily obtained by students of this age group: nicotine, alcohol, marijuana, ecstasy, prescription medication and energy drinks. We went through each substance separately, did a variety of hands on activities and the students were really engaged. I did plan for this unit to take up my entire practicum but I did not expect that my students would engage as well as they did.

What really finished off the unit, and why I feel it exhibits our program goal of integrating knowledge in practice is our closing fishbowl discussion. We had done one before during our novel study unit and the students really loved it. They fought to get one of the empty seats in the middle and came up with some really powerful points to discuss. As I wanted to use it as an assessment OF, I outlined before the weekend that each student would have to enter the fishbowl at least once and a maximum of three times. I gave them the question “what can you do as students to reduce the popularity of illegal addictive substances” and sent them away for the weekend to think about it. Come Monday, we set up the room and it went amazingly. As I taught three different classes, each time that I did this activity I got three very different discussions, even though it was the same question.

Just before the class ended, I shared with the students something that my grade seven teacher had done with my class. She had set a challenge for each of us to come find her in 10 years and tell her that we had made it through high school and university without smoking or doing drugs. I told them that I remembered her saying that every time that I was caught in a sticky situation where I would be tempted to break that promise and it really helped me through. I then gave each student a contract to sign, promising to use addictive substances responsibly and outlining the same challenge that my teacher gave me to never try drugs. They all signed it and kept it. I had some amazing comments from parents afterwards thanking me for this activity as it “was all their kids could talk about.” This really meant a lot to me and really proved to me the importance of integrating good teaching practices with the curriculum. 

TEP Program Goal: Social Justice

This program goal brings me right back to the Adele School for Special Children in Antigua, West Indies. As a school for special needs, social justice was happening everyday. As my role in Antigua was not only to teach but to also mentor an undergrad, I focused on his needs and what he wanted to get out of teaching at Adele. As Mitch had been to Adele the year previously, he knew what to expect. I asked him what he wanted to work on and he said that the CCR's were really difficult to do with some of the less verbal students.

CCR is a program that Dr. Joanna Sheppard has integrated into her teaching. It stands for Check, Connect and Reflect as her goal as an educator is to have students recognize that PE class isn't just a break from the classroom  but that they are learning through play. After each lesson, we were to lead our students through a short discussion on how they learnt a particular life skill during the lesson that day. Generally, the way we taught is the last 5 minutes, we gather the students into a circle and have a verbal discussion. Mitch's concerns with this is in the past he found it very hard for the students to make the connections that he wanted them to make and he felt that it was sometimes not worth doing with them as "they wouldn't get it." So I made it my mission to introduce some new ideas for myself and Mitch to use for the students to participate in CCR.

Some of the things we did was for them to put up their hand if they agreed with something I said, or run to one side of the play area if they disagreed, drew pictures, made sounds, all sorts of non verbal cues. It was really amazing what these students were able to communicate past their physical inabilities.

I really felt that I had made a difference at this school. The teachers and I were able to exchange ideas on how to integrate new learning and I left feeling that I had become a socially just teacher.



BC Teaching Standard: Educators Understand and Apply Knowledge of Student Growth and Development

The unit that I was most nervous about teaching was my Speech unit. This was something that my Teacher Mentor had taught every year and was quite specific about what she wanted out of it. Students were to choose a topic, research, rehearse and perform a speech in front of the class and the top two students in each class would then perform in front of the whole Middle School. I decided to turn it into a critical challenge where students would explore the idea of “what makes a powerful speech?” I started with showing them videos of powerful speeches (Martin Luther King Jr and Severn Stevens) and had them reflect on what they thought was powerful. They then chose a topic and we did a variety of activities that taught them how to narrow their topic down and make it a powerful speech.  In the end I had some pretty fantastic speeches. They finished the unit by reflecting back to what they thought had been powerful about the videos of powerful speeches and how they had incorporated those ideas into their own speeches. I was very impressed with the thought process of ALL of my students…every single student handed this assignment in ON TIME. I was thrilled.

One of the best ways that I was able to see student development in this unit was the use of the critical challenge. Most of the activities were self directed but I always started out with a teacher example and went from there. My main evidence of this unit was seeing my students stand up in front of the class speaking about a topic they are passionate and confident about and absolutely nailing it!

BC Teaching Standard: Educators Value the Involvement and Support of Parents, Guardians, Families and Communities in Schools.

As it is also a program goal, I made working with parents a priority in my practicum but it was not easy. On my first day in the school, way back in September, I was invited to participate in the meet the teachers night  where I got to meet a handful of parents. I continued this connection with sending letters home when I started my school experience and again at the beginning of my long practicum. Overall, I felt I had a developed a good relationship with parents.

I decided to keep a parent communication log as I was dealing with 90 student's worth of moms, dads, step moms, step dads, social workers, grandmas, uncles, etc. This ended up being hugely successful as I even ran into a parent in Seattle over spring break and we had a quick chat about his son's progress. Being able to doccument whenever I discussed a student was great for my reflective practice as it made it easier to write report card comments when the time came.

I was also able to implement use of my communication log when I picked the top students to perform their speeches in front of the Middle school. Because I had already made contact with them before, I was comfortable in calling each parent and inviting them to watch their child perform. It was very entertaining starting out the conversation with "don't worry, this is a good phone call."


BC Teaching Standard: Educators Engage in Career Long Learning

One of the most talked about teaching practices is classroom management. I did not realize how important this was until starting the Teacher Education Program. I began developing a plan from the suggestions from my professors and the theory I was learning in class but it wasn't until I read "Sammy and His Behaviour Problems" by Caltha Crowe that I figured out how I wanted to go about it.

Similar to what Crowe does in her classroom, I started with brainstorming with my class what a happy classroom looks like. On the first day of my long practicum, I wrote the suggestions on the board in a big web and then have the students break into groups and decide what three suggestions they thought were most important. They shared out and I put check marks next to the ones they thought were most important. At this point, they had narrowed the list to 10 ideas. We had another discussion and discussed how we can turn these observations into rules and this is what we got! I wrote them on a giant poster and posted them at the front of the classroom where everyone could see!

I referenced these rules as often as I could throughout my practicum and having the students be as involved as they were in the process made enforcing the rules extremely easy. I decided this was an example of career long learning as this process taught me that I will be tweaking my classroom management style throughout my whole career as a teacher. It only took one book to get me started, who knows what my classroom will look like after 30 years worth of educational reading!