Alyssa Supple

Professor Suk
Educational Field Experience EDUC 230-13
Spring 2015
Rationale Statement Unit Plan NJPTS Standard Ten
Statement of Standard Ten:
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. (NJPTS, 2014, p. 37).
Name of Artifact: Welcome Letter
Date of Artifact: January 29, 2015
Course: Education Field Experience EDUC 230-13
Rationale Statement:
The welcome letter was one of the first artifacts to be completed this semester, but
one that introduced the importance of establishing healthy and productive relationships as
a teacher. At face value, the welcome letter is designed to introduce yourself and the
course to your students and to their families, but the implicit intentions of this artifact are
much more complex. By further outlining the course schedule and classroom
expectations, you as a teacher are establishing a rapport between yourself and your
students and their families. This relationship is important, as it will largely shape how the
course is conducted and how the material you teach is to be valued by your students. In
my welcome letter, I explicitly stated my goal to help students develop their thinking and
communication skills, and by establishing these expectations with the students and their
families through a written letter, I am appealing to Standard Ten Performance four: The
teacher works collaboratively with learners and their families to establish mutual

Supple
2
expectations and ongoing communication to support learner development and
achievement, (NJPTS, 2014, p. 38). It is important to establish this full involvement
from the students and their families, as it will increase student motivation and improve
academic performance. Furthermore, the establishment of such positive relationships,
both in and out of the school setting, improves the collective efficacy of the school, the
importance of which Standard Ten explicates upon: The teacher understands that
alignment of family, school, and community spheres of influence enhances student
learning and that discontinuity in these spheres of influence interferes with learning,
(NJPTS, 2014, p. 39). In order to foster student growth, teachers need to take into account
all of the factors that are influencing the lives of our students and to work together to
establish achievable goals that are greatly influenced by the relationships formed between
the school, the community, and the students.
Understanding how all of these relationships play out, and how they are
established early on through artifacts such as the welcome letter, has taught me how
influential teachers are outside of the school setting. How a school is managed greatly
affects the students therein, and moreover the community in which they live. This entire
picture revolves around the individual educators, as even on the very first day of class, a
teacher is changing the lives of his or her students, affecting the culture of the school and
of the community as a whole.
The composition and distribution of the welcome letter is a very important part of
the classroom experience, and one that is largely determinant of the ensuing school year. I
will definitely use an artifact such as this in my future teaching career, as well as I will
apply the lessons that I have learned from analyzing this artifact.

Supple
3
References
Professional Development in New Jersey. (2014, August 4). Retrieved from New Jersey
State Department of Education: http://www.state.nj.us/education/code/current/
title6a/chap9c.pdf