Emilee Rodriguez

Professor Ahn

TCH_LRN 401

02 November 2023

Reflection #2: Competency 3.H

To me, this competency requires teachers to be able to work well with others to benefit

their students and improve learning outcomes. By including all stakeholders in the teaching and

learning process, it gives the student a wider community of people who can help them learn

rather than just one person. When considering how students learn, teachers must understand

that collaboration allows them to have access to ideas, materials, and background information

that they can use in the classroom to help their students learn in meaningful and effective

ways.

These ideas are important for all students, but specifically MLLs as they may lack the

ability to access information through the standard teaching methods of a general classroom

teacher. There is also no such thing as a perfect teacher and no two students are alike. Even if a

teacher excels in some areas, they will eventually encounter a student who they aren't sure

how to teach. This is where the collaborative communities come in. Chances are, someone in

the community has a strategy that will help this teacher. Parents can provide critical

background information on the student to give teachers context, or they can continue the

teacher's strategies at home to consistently help the student. Other teachers can provide

advice or support to the teacher, or even step in and teach the student themselves if they excel

in the area the student needs more support in. Admin can provide materials, guidance, or
additional professional development to help get better skills. Community partners can give

different perspectives, unique skills, and materials that teachers may not have access to

otherwise.

At Sunnyside Elementary, I attended many professional development days, as well as

PLC meetings with the first-grade team. These meetings were very helpful for me as they not

only provided me with support as a student teacher but also gave me context for the types of

decisions teachers need to make and why they make them. I got to learn new strategies for

classroom management and self-regulation skills from my mentor teacher and other seasoned

teachers on the team. I also got to attend the PLC meeting we had with the Core+ team and

work with the specialists to create strategies to help develop learning plans for the students

who need extra support. These pieces of evidence show that I can work with a PLC, learn from

others, and apply what I have learned to my teaching.

I also have experience working with my peers to create lesson plans. Recently for my

Tch_Lrn 413 class, I had to create a lesson plan to demonstrate how to use read, pair, share to

support MLLs. I worked with two of my classmates to create an ELA lesson plan for second

graders and a presentation to model the teaching strategy. During this time, I worked a lot to

ensure that the lesson plan followed UDL principles to specifically support MLLs. I knew that as

someone who is working towards an ELL certificate, I would have more insight than my peers

who are getting endorsements in other areas. I used what I know to come up with an activity

that could be modified for MLLs and, with input from my peers, created materials to support

those learners. This piece of evidence shows that I can use my specialized knowledge and share
it with others to help them improve their teaching in ways that are actionable and within

reason.

In the future, I will continue to collaborate with others to gain different perspectives,

new ideas, and better insight into teaching. My peers, professors, and other mentors have

given me many great ideas that I have applied to my teaching to make me more effective, and

this is something that I will continue to do in the future. It affects my teaching in many ways,

because it gives me avenues to assess whether students are succeeding – if they aren't, I can

ask others for help. This makes teaching feel less isolated and takes some of the weight off my

shoulders, as I recognize that I am part of a team full of people with the knowledge and

compassion to support me through whatever challenges come my way.

My students benefit from this competency a huge amount, as it gives them a bigger

support circle and helps everyone stay on the same page. I can imagine that it can be difficult to

learn when every adult in your life is using different strategies to help you learn. It can also be

frustrating when your teacher doesn't know how to teach you. If the teacher keeps using the

same methods that don't work, students become unmotivated and may feel like they can't

learn. This creates learners who have low self-confidence, low motivation, and lack the growth

mindsets needed to become effective learners. When teachers collaborate to adapt their

teaching methods, students are given more opportunities to succeed which not only improves

their content and language mastery, but it gives them the skills they need to feel like good

lifelong learners.