Standard #10: 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.

The INTASC standard number 10, Leadership and Collaboration has a multitude of relevance to me as a prospective teacher. Not only does the standard mean to collaborate with members of the school community, but even the larger community as a whole. For example, getting students involved with the community in which they live, grow, learn, and play in. Helping students become familiar with the resources accessible to them and allowing them to have experience with members of the community whom can help foster knowledge. This standard demands teachers to become active learners and to research information, activities, and resources within the community. The responsibility this standard suggests is that teachers generate and engage themselves as learners and as a teacher, learning with the students. The standard also demands a teacher to become familiar with family, school, and community as one working system and to provide students with engaging activities to nurture student growth in education. INTASC standard 10 is a rich guideline for all teachers to master and will help students to flourish not only in school but in their community as well.

The artifact I chose to share for this standard is the final poster my students put together that displays their work throughout the project and what they have learned throughout the experience. I chose this artifact because I feel it is an accurate portrayal of all they have learned, the activities they have performed, as well as how they involved themselves in the community. This poster was compiled by my students and then on display for members of the Dubuque community to view. The students stood by the poster and verbally presented the content they learned to community members, parents, teachers, and fellow peers. They also enjoyed sharing their experience of the trolley ride around Dubuque, where the students got to see the topic they were learning about in action. This is displayed on the poster through pictures of the students outside the two theatres of which they studied.

In the spring of 2013, I was assigned to work with a group of three students from St. Columbkille Catholic Elementary School in Dubuque, Iowa. My role as a prospective teacher was to teach my group a specific area of Dubuque History during an eight week time period, meeting once a week. All schools in the district address this topic of Dubuque history each year in the third grade. My specific content area was Dubuque entertainment. My overall objective for the students was to learn how the entertainment aspect of the Dubuque Theatres has changed over time. My group, consisting of three girls, was very enthusiastic about this topic, as they chose to be part of the Entertainment group. The three students were each very different in regards to learning levels. I had one student who was an over achiever; everything had to be perfect, she did outside of class work on the project when not assigned, and she knew the factual information like the back of her hands. The other two students were more reserved and took them a little longer to acquire the overall objective of the history unit. However, all three students were eager to learn, and enjoyed learning about the topic each day. After completing this semester long experience with the third graders, I have learned a great deal about teaching history to young students, as well as how to implement INTASC standard 10. The first task I had to do as a teacher was to learn the content myself. I had to involve myself in the community; researching in the Center For Dubuque History, and exploring the online Dubuque Encyclopedia. Once I compiled enough valid information and even artifacts, I was challenged with the task of how to teach third graders this factual information. This is one of the biggest things I learned during this experience. History is factual and can be boring to young students, especially when they have no personal connection with the particular content in which they are studying. However, I found ways to present the information I discovered about Dubuque entertainment to the third graders in a way they would learn through a variety of activities during each lesson. Involving the students with the information was a challenge at first. I needed to think of activities to present the knowledge so it wasnt all facts. For example, I did this by creating what am I booklets where the girls had to guess the theatre by reading facts then filling in the missing letters that spelled each theatre. I soon came to realize that the three girls have each been to the theatres physically and they could make a personal connection to the content. Also, since the content was about their own community, they found the information to be very intriguing since it was in their own backyard. This phrase is how I framed my work with the students. Teaching students content that they can connect to is imperative and through this project, my students definitely got the opportunity to learn through their community, like INTASC standard 10 suggest. The third graders were provided the opportunity to utilize and explore the Center for Dubuque History on the Loras College campus. This required me to collaborate with the director of the center and meet with him personally to prepare information and artifacts for my students to learn from. Another way the students were involved in community learning was with the trolley ride around Dubuque. During the ride, the third graders got to listen to a tour guide share

his knowledge of Dubuque history as we visited various sites around the area. From this I realize how important it is to utilize the resources around you. One other important thing I learned and realized through this experience was teaching students by doing and not lecturing. I enjoyed watching my students complete the task I had them do with enthusiasm. They thoroughly enjoyed the learning experience and I was able to assess their knowledge of the content by having simple conversations about the topic with them each day. I did not need to give an end of the unit exam to the students, as I assessed their knowledge each time we met. If I knew they didnt quite understand something I would make sure to incorporate more information about the topic. For example, during the first few weeks the students couldnt remember which theatre had which characteristics. So, I incorporated a lot of comparing and contrasting in order for the girls to see the differences of the theatres side by side through pictures and Venn Diagrams. After completing these activities a few times the students were able to make connections and remember the specifics of each theatre. Overall, I learned a great deal while working with the third graders on Dubuque history. The experiences I encountered inside the classroom and outside the classroom in the Dubuque community helped me grow as a teacher. I was privileged to work with fellow peers, classroom teachers, and community members on this project which helped me to realize the unlimited resources there are to provide students with! Helping students become aware of community learning is a task that all teachers must accomplish. There is always room to improve as a teacher and better strategies to teach students as well. There is no better way to do so than working with individuals around you whom can help you foster your students educational growth.