Portfolio

Assignment B
Sarah Herman
TCH_LRN 310
October 18th, 2016

























Hello! I am Miss Herman
I am so excited to welcome your student into my classroom! What an exciting year to be a first
grader! I could not be more excited to be sharing
this experience with you and your child! I can
hardly wait to finally meet each and everyone of
my students! With that being said, I wanted to
introduce myself before the year gets too busy.
My name is Sarah Herman and I am a recent
graduate from the College of Education at
Washington State University (Go Cougs!) I enjoy
spending time with my family in my home town of
Maple Valley, Washington and spending lots of
time with my Rottweiler puppy Ava. However,
because I have a puppy she keeps me up all hours
of the night! With that being said, I wanted to let
you know that you can contact me and expect a
pretty fast response, however, if it so happens she
lets me sleep in I will respond within 24 hours of
receiving the email.

Ways to contact me:

Phone: (425) - 123-4567
Email: Sarah.Herman@futureschoolname.org
Our general Goals and Expectations for the Year

1.Work on our reading experience inside and outside of the classroom!

Each student will work on our reading comprehension skills through mini lessons throughout the
year. Students will also have to complete a reading log monthly where they track their reading
from 15-20 minutes at least 5x a week.
2.Create communication between student, teacher and parents
We will keep track of the students work through dialogue journals. If you have a question about
any returned school work or upcoming events feel free to contact me by writing a note either on
the paper, or in the journal. I will respond on the same form, via sticky-note, or sealed envelope.
3.Penmanship Priority!
Because we will not have much time to work on penmanship in class, worksheets will be sent
home. Although a worksheet will be sent home every other day, in the folder at the end of the
month only 4 need to be completed to get full points

I am excited to meet you and your child! Look out for future newsletters in your childs
folder!

Thank youJ
Miss Herman
Part 2:
When I first began teaching I want to establish A LOT of parent teacher communication.
Although it will be challenging I think it will be a good way to allow the parents to trust a first
year teacher. One of the ways in which I hope to communicate with the teacher is allowing
open communication! I want to be extremely prompt in my replies to parents emails, however,
still allowing myself to have a personal life outside of the classroom that is not glued to my
email.
Another form of communication is dialogue/progress reports Sample 1

I would use this progress report to create open communication with the parents. Although this
will not be necessary to respond to every week, the students parents will have the opportunity
to see me reaching out, as well as then be provided with opportunity to utilize another form of
communication. As discussed in chapter 4 of our textbook, this would help the students stay on
top of their classwork as well as keep them accountable because the reports will be sent home
weekly. Therefore, it will not only be my eyes on the classwork, but their parents will be noted
as well.

Another form of communication that will be used are monthly newsletters sample 2




























These newsletters will be sent out via email, and in the students folders. The students can
submit drawings that will decorate the newsletters as well! The newsletters will discuss what
we have learned this month, as well as upcoming events! If parents have concerns or questions
they can always email, or reach me after school at my desk number.
My communication plan will strengthen my relationship with students because it will
keep them in check. It will also help the barrier between parent student teacher
communication which could cause issues at home or at school. I will communicate and manage
instructional expectations specifically through the use of progress reports. This will keep the
students in line as well as show the parents what the expectations of the classroom are weekly.
Overall, using communication not only keeps myself in line, but the students and parents as
well since it helps each other if confusion appears.

Part 3:
The part of parent teacher communication that I am most scared to approach however,

is communication skills for addressing student conflict directly. The reason I am most nervous

for this is no parent wants their child to misbehave, even if the reason they are misbehaving is

due to the fact that the parents did not teach the students otherwise. However, out of the

three approaches mentioned in our text book by Evertson & Emmer, the one that I connected

the most with and felt most comfortable utilizing would be Empathetic Responding (p. 168).

The reason I would feel the most comfortable working with my students and the parents this

way is because I am really good at feeling empathy. I think it is hard sometimes to put yourself

in someones shoes. However, if you are not able to realize what someone else is going through

it would be hard to move on to the problem solving solution (p. 171). I think that this would be

the appropriate way to address a situation in the beginning because maintaining a positive

relationship for as long as possible with the parents is ideal.

The skill that I would need to develop the most however, is Constructive assertiveness. I

think that the reason I would not be able to do this is because it seems a bit insensitive.

Although it is addressing a situation clearly, my experience working with parents at daycares is

that they do not want to hear it clearly. This is obvious when considering that no parent wants

to hear the negatives about their child. Something that I do not like about this approach is that

you also insist that the behavior be corrected. I think that in any approach that is the teachers

point, however, there are better ways to approach the parents so that they are not offended.