Emily Weigand

Professor Suk

EDUC 230-02 Education Field Experience

Fall 2021

Rationale Statement- Standard #5

Standard #5 Application of Content

The teacher understands how to connect concepts and use differing perspectives to engage

learners in critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative problem solving related to authentic

local and global issues (New Jersey Professional Standards for Teachers Alignment with

InTASC, 2014, p. 6).

Artifact: Education Experiences (other course artifact)

Date of Completion: January 21, 2020

Course completed in: EDUC 212

Rationale Statement:

The artifact that I am using for this rationale statement is an assignment I had to complete for my

foundations of education course a little under a year ago. For this assignment, I was to write

about three scholarly experiences I have had that impacted the way I plan on teaching in the

future. This artifact relates to standard 5.i.6 “the teacher engages learners in generating and

evaluating new ideas and novel approaches, seeking inventive solutions to problems, and

developing original work” (New Jersey Professional Standards for Teachers Alignment with

InTASC, 2014, p. 7). In this artifact, I wrote that my most memorable experiences in education
were either when I had an amazing teacher, or a horrible teacher. This standard really draws the

line between an average teacher and an amazing one in my opinion, because you can teach

whatever material you want, but the students have to be engaged in order for them to learn. I

wrote about a math teacher that I had in middle school, and he would simply copy problems onto

the board and solve them in front of us. He did the problems right, he was a very smart person,

but not one student in that class was taking any of the information in. He did nothing to engage

the learners, therefore the learners did not absorb or retain any information.

Although I created this artifact a year ago, I remember it took a lot of self-reflection. To ask

someone to analyze twelve years of schooling and choose three specific moments that determine

how you want to teach is a heavy question. I found it very surprising that I even thought to write

about my not so helpful math teacher, but it really goes to show that negative experiences in

school carry the same weight as the positive ones, maybe even a little bit more.

This artifact can be beneficial to my future teacher self because I can look back at it to remember

what I did and did not want to bring into my classroom. I think it will be a great reminder that

relaying information is not enough; engaging your students and watching that lightbulb go off

when they finally understand a concept is the key to being a great educator.
References:

New Jersey Professional Standards for Teachers for Teachers alignment with InTASC. (2014,

May 5). The Official Web Site for The State of New Jersey. Retrieved October 4, 2021, from

https://www.state.nj.us/education/profdev/requirements/standards/docs/ProfStandardsforTeacher

sAlignmentwithInTASC.pdf