My Summer As A Breakthrough Teaching Fellow

The twenty-five stories that are contained in the book, My First Year As A Teacher, are about real teachers and their experiences during the first year of teaching. Each story is different. Some are about memorable students while other stories are about some of the hardships that are encountered as a novice teacher. The diverse sampling of stories in this book gives insight of what kind of problems one might encounter as a teacher, yet they also describe how rewarding the profession can be. I found it rather difficult to choose only ten stories as my favorite but after much consideration and rereading I decided on the following stories because in many ways I could relate to the students as well as the teachers that are given life in these stories.

explanation as to why the teacher will not help the student reach their goals. When students grow

Teachers are able to target the learning gaps by developing a plan of action based on the needs for our students. Verbiest (2014) and Hershkovitz (2015) argue data is used to tailor (how we sever students, how we offer support, types of support, what resources we need to invest on, whether we take a student to students needs with our school psychologist) instruction for students in all content areas in an effort to increase student achievement. As a result, the school can provide specific professional learning, support, and resources to teachers based on the needs and areas of weakness of our students (Fox, 2001). As lifelong learners, teachers recognize that their professional practice continues to evolve as they reflect and act on new information. If teachers have information that helps them confidently identify the root of educational challenges and track progress, they can more readily develop action plans that will have a positive impact on their students’ achievement (Halverson et al.,

My ability to maintain an orderly environment enables students to be engaged in meaningful academic learning setting where high expectations will be met. My ability to provide constant feedback, redirect, and scaffold supports my high academic standards for all Houston ISD students. As an educator, one of my most vitals jobs is work to close the achievement gap. A key to this is setting high expectations for all students. My ability to assume responsibility for moving my students learning forward will ensure that high academic expectations for each student are met. I truly believe that my ability to motivate students, meet the needs of multiple learning styles, and manage a classroom that promotes academic success will support the high academic expectations for all Houston ISD

It also meets their academic and social skills. This pedagogy will enable me to detect the strengths in all students. A teacher may fail to the strengths of a difficult student. Sometimes their behavioral weaknesses overshadow their strengths. Building on a student’s strengths can aid them in their development.

Some of the goals of schooling and society in the United States are to develop students and citizens, who have high aspirations, believe in their capabilities, are hopeful they can realize their aspirations, and are optimistic about their future in general. Such characteristics are important because each leads to overall well-being (Bandura, 1977; Scheirer & Carver, 1985; Snyder et al., 1991), student achievement and higher graduation rates (Snyder et al., 2002) through a personal sense of urgency which allows them to take control of their life, challenge themselves, persevere through difficulties, and cope when obstacles arise (McBride, 2012).

First of all, we define success in terms of each student working along with their parents and then work in partnership to achieve that success.

In order for changes to happen and help this percentage reach the average requirement improvements need to happen here at Anaheim schools. A way to improve students success in Anaheim schools is by teaching students to have a growth mindset. Those students who work with a growth mindset take on challenges and those who don’t give up and don’t do well. In “The Secret To Raising Smart Kids,” by, Dweck, Carol the importance of students education is discussed by the two types of mindsets a student should have. The first type is called a growth mindset and having this mindset allows the student to take risks when a problem gets difficult.

He argued that it was the teacher’s perceptions and their expectations of the students that continues to keep the gap wide. This view is a controversial one because of the underlying tone that somehow racism could be causing the gap. However, it has been stated that sometimes teachers form a preconceived notion about their students and that notion ultimately affects how they treat their students, what is expected of their students and how the students begin to perceive themselves. He suggested using the proper amount of “wait time”, proper feedback, and mirroring the “Great Expectations” initiative for implementing a teaching approach that black students will excel under (Ferguson,

People have different interpretations of what success may mean to them. In the article, “Leave No Child Behind” by Marian Wright Edelman, the author explains many lessons on the steps to become successful. According to some, success is measured by social status and wealth. I agree with Edelman’s lessons that there is no free lunch, we should not be afraid of taking risks or being criticized, and we should never think that life is not worth living. I agree that there is no such thing as free lunch.

Lawrence, an African American male principal, definition of the achievement gap was focused on how his school is educating black and other minority students in comparison to white students. Yet, Lawrence also revealed a strong disposition and a moral courage to engage with issues of race in his school. Flores decided to engage Lawrence in a discussion regarding Lawrence’s emphasis on culturally responsive and culturally relevant pedagogy with his teachers:

There are the winners. These are the educators who maintain a positive outlook, see challenges as opportunities to learn, seek to continually upgrade their practice, and generously support their colleagues’ growth.

In Carol Dweck’s speech “The Power of Yet”, she explains how praise affects students in school. A school in Chicago used the term ‘not yet’ in their grading system, allowing the students to understand their abilities can grow. Those with fixed mindsets seemed to bask in their ‘failure’, unlike those with a growth mindset, who looked at the fail as a learning opportunity, Dweck observed. By praising wisely, like praising effort rather than grades, we can change from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Even children from Native American reservations did better than Microsoft kids due to this growth mindset. With this in mind, the Hart District should consider using the power of yet in their school system. To do this, the Hart District should bring growth mindset into our school by praising students widely and correctly, as well as having individualized learning programs for students.

When thinking about a key issue to explore, we quickly turned to achievement gaps because we know it will be an issue we face once we have our own students. The different factors that we focused on were race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender. When discussing achievement gaps, we are referring to a persistent deficit in educational performance between various groups of students. We know that we will be teaching various students who are learning on all different levels and some of those students might experience facts that has create an achievement gap in their learning. Therefore, we wanted to explore the ways that we can help these students. Additionally, we both want to teach in a low-income area. Since achievement gaps are sometimes

My greatest contribution as an instructor has been the time I have spent off the podium. There are several subjects that I may not be familiar with or maybe seen as the tougher subjects or perhaps even boring. The time that is spent preparing outside of the classroom is extremely important. As an instructor first and foremost you have to spend countless hours researching a subject, analyze it, and anticipate questions. It is not a comfortable to be in front of students and not fully knowing the subject. Not only does the material have to make sense to you, you then have to take that material and think about how to explain it so that every different Soldier from every different background can make sense of it. Practicing teaching methods using different comparisons, developing training aids all takes a lot of time outside of the duty hours to deliver the best level of instruction possible. Then there is the time spent improving on the lesson plan. The lesson plans we receive are often times missing information, they order they are in doesn’t make sense and sometimes they are completely blank a give use nothing to go off of. That means dedicating the hours outside of the class room to improve or even completely build that lesson plan. Time must be spent to ensure that every piece of information the students need is included. This is not always possible we could easily spend an entire week breaking down the components of an automatic transmission and go into