MSU Teaching Standard 6 & 7:
Engages with Community Outside of Classroom
Description of Standard: "Teaching occurs within an existing community of adults – other teachers, counselors, special education teachers, coaches, administrators, and parents – who are invested in students' success. Learning how to communicate and work with colleagues and how to follow building, district, and state policies is part of learning to teach."
During my time as an intern at Owosso High School, I learned quite quickly that, just as is the case with our students, teachers work best amongst many, and often learn just as much outside of the classroom as they do inside of the classroom. That is to say, in other words, that a great deal of my own learning and development as a teacher over the course of my internship year took place outside of the "typical" classroom setting and involved me learning through collaboration with others. The artifacts below illustrate the ways in which my participation in conferences, school events, drives, and various professional development opportunities, more specifically, allowed me to expand my role as an English educator.
Conferences:
2014 NCTE and MCTE Presenter and Attendee
As part of my undergraduate research on incorporating and truly validating students' funds of knowledge through culturally sustaining pedagogy, and under the direction of esteemed Michigan State University English education professor Ellen Cushman, I had the immense opportunity of leading a presentation titled “Fostering Student
Voices and Creativity in Multimodal Mediums in University Classrooms and
Beyond” along with four of my pre-service teaching peers at both the Michigan Conference of Teachers of English (MCTE) in East Lansing, MI, as well as the National Conference of Teachers of English (NCTE) in Washington, DC. This experience not only allowed me to work closely with my peers in conducting, writing about, and presenting comprehensive research, but also gave me the chance to attend incredibly enriching and eye-opening presentations led by experts in the field of education. Attending these conferences unquestionably gave me the chance to further develop my pedagogical approaches and have in turn ultimately driven me to implement engaging, dialogic, student-centered strategies in my classroom.
Michigan State University Education Technology Conference Attendee
The certificate above confirms my attendance of Michigan State University's annual Educational Technology conference--a conference that expanded my perspectives on the pertinence of incorporating 21st century technology in our ever-evolving classrooms, for our ever-evolving students and offered me practical, exciting, and extremely engaging student-centered ways in which to do so! This conference ultimately reinvigorated my drive and passion to integrate technology in effective, meaningful ways within the walls of my English classroom.
Owosso High School Can Food Drive:
"Can Court" Representative
Every year, in an effort to not only raise money for the community and donate canned food to those in need during the holiday season, but also entice students to enjoy and appreciate doing so, Owosso High School elects staff members to be a part of "can court." As an elected "can court" representative, I, along with my mentor teacher, committed to the cause by selling coffee in the morning and Little Caesar's pizzas during passing time every day, over the course of a two week period. Moreover, in order to celebrate the achievement of raising the most money in the Lansing community, Owosso High School held an early-morning assembly featured on a local news station. The pictures above illustrate my participation as a "can court" member and showcase yours truly decorated as a "human Christmas tree" during the assembly.