I feel called to teaching as a profession because of the phrase, "every child needs a village." I feel deeply that my place in the village is as a mentor and teacher, who can help students develop their life skills while also growing socially and emotionally. In terms of content, I have always loved English literature and the study of language. I believe wholeheartedly in the power of words and the necessity of studying them as a way to develop essential skills for navigating the world: namely critical thinking, analysis, and media literacy, which I believe are growing necessities in our increasingly global, technology-filled world. I have both experienced and witnessed the way reading and writing can expand your internal and external worlds, creating new opportunities for success. As a teacher, I aim to help my students develop skills they can carry and transfer into all aspects of their life, as well as impart in them a desire to continue learning and growing through reading and writing. Specifically with middle and high school students, I strive to provide them with skills that will help them navigate the transition from middle to high school, then from high school to college/careers
When I first began at Kent State University, I was dual majoring in Integrated Language Arts and American Sign Language (ASL), intending to become certified to teach both Language Arts and ASL. Over time and experience taking courses and participating in short-term field placements, I decided to drop my ASL major, focusing instead on Integrated Language Arts and adding a minor in Mild to Moderate Special Education. After taking a few Special Education courses for my ASL major, I realized it was something I wanted to study deeper when a professor explained to me the role that general education teachers play in the IEP process and inclusion learning. I realized that, as a general education teacher, I could be much more effective and well-rounded if I had a deeper knowledge of how to support all the students in my room.
Throughout the process of completing my degree and the remainder of my field placements, I have only become more and more grateful I chose to pursue the combination of focuses I did. I have developed a unique skillset through this process, able to switch and uniquely combine approaches to best suit the individual needs of each group of students I work with. Firstly, I approach all of my lessons and classroom choices with the principles of Universal Design for Learning, striving to make my classroom as accessible as possible for all students from the very beginning. From there I combine the prominent Special Education ideas of data-based decision making, applied behavior analysis, and explicit instruction with the creative world of Integrated Language Arts.
With this unique approach I am able to teach my students in a way that is backed by scientific evidence, while also meeting them where they are, providing opportunities for their learning to be personalized, and cultivating a developmentally-appropriate sense of agency over their learning. I believe this approach gives students the best chance of success in truly learning and being able to implement their knowledge going forward. Additionally, this approach allows me to make my classroom a more equitable space, paving the way for positive classroom relationships and more fruitful learning going forward.
Above all, I want my students to enter my classroom and feel both comfortable and capable. It's very important to me that all my students feel safe, welcomed, and included in my classroom, while at the same time knowing it as a place where they will work hard and grow. In both my personal and professional life, I believe in and implement a growth mindset, which is an approach backed by neuroscience research that teaches the value of neurological stress. In this context, stress means tasks that require energy and effort from your brain to complete. With the growth mindset, stress is believed to be enhancing, leading to better neuroplasticity and brain function. When applying this to education, that means that students learn more and ultimately learn better when they are being regularly challenged. Also in the growth mindset, failure is not a bad thing, rather it is a time you worked your brain and set yourself up for success later because of it. The only true failure is not trying at all. I would like my classroom to be an environment built on these ideals and that fosters them in my students.
In addition to my Integrated Language Arts major, I have also studied for a Mild to Moderate Special Education Minor. This means my classroom approaches are also guided by a lot of special education principles, particularly explicit instruction, Universal Design for Learning, and Applied Behavior Analysis. I believe that all student behaviors, positive or negative, have a root cause, and that addressing those root causes through high quality, thoughtful instruction and other preemptive measures is the best approach in mediating disruptive behavior in the classroom. Considering all of these guiding approaches and values, my personal approach to classroom management centers around planning, accountability, and communication.
To me, classroom management begins with how you set up the environment, controlling the antecedents to guide behavior in a positive/productive direction. This includes how the classroom is set up physically. I want my students to feel included and equal, but also ready to work and collaborate with myself and their peers. With that in mind, my classroom will be decorated with things that support this: inclusive posters and quotes on the walls, a class library filled with diverse texts, and past student work that shows how much students are capable of. I would also love for my classroom to evolve over the years through student input, becoming a museum of all the learning done within it. For example, in my high school, several of my teachers allowed their seniors to paint the ceiling tiles in their rooms with art that represented their learning. While things like this may seem small, they can provide a sense of comfort and excitement about becoming part of the classroom for students entering for the first time, as they see how much the students before them were involved. The arrangement of the desks is also important, I intend to have tables arranged to give everyone an equal voice in the discussion. This means either a semicircle or pod arrangement. Lastly, I approach my lesson planning with the same preemptive management, thinking the entire time about possible points of student struggle or where disruptive behaviors may occur, and coming up with ways to stop those issues from happening in the first place, such as minimizing transitions or down time. Universal Design for Learning is incredibly beneficial here, as highly accessible instruction minimizes the likelihood of student confusion, therefore lowering the chance of disruptive behavior spawned from frustration or anxiety.
Accountability will be very important in my classroom, both for my students and myself. All behaviors that I want my students to adopt, I intend to model for them. That means showing them what trying even when you’re not 100% confident, asking questions when confused, and even failure, look like. Through this, I intend to teach my students they have accountability over their learning, no one else, and that it's okay for things to be difficult or challenging, but that it's not an option to not try. I intend to begin each new year/semester with a candid, open discussion on this idea with students, to set the expectation right away. I also intend to help students develop accountability over their work and behavior by giving them a say whenever possible, including building the class rules together at the beginning of the year/semester, and giving them choices on their assignments whenever possible. This also means that all class rules, policies around deadlines, and consequences will not be flexible past when they are first discussed and agreed upon by me and my students. I do this to show students that I am also taking accountability as their teacher, following through on my word and responsibilities in the same way I expect them to. Whatever we mutually decide on as the final policy/rule will become “the law of the land” that I will stick to, without deviations, for the class. I also plan to encourage effort over results. In one example, a student who completes an assignment, even if they were to get it all wrong, will always earn more than a student who did not complete the assignment at all. The same goes for students who do not take advantage of in-class work time or participate in activities. Lastly, I intend to use elements of Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and positive reinforcement to help students recognize their own successes and strive for more.
In my opinion, communication is a somewhat untapped resource among teachers. While we often, rightfully, prioritize student communication with the teacher and collaboration with peers, we do not as often think about teacher to student communication outside of instruction. Much like with accountability, I want to encourage students to communicate and collaborate by modeling that behavior for them. This means honest, candid, discussions with them about their learning and my decisions. So many students don’t see the value in school, often lamenting that the things they learn “don’t relate to the real world.” As teachers, we know the value in learning, and I believe talking through those reasons with students will help them want to participate more. Not only because it helps them understand the value, but because their teacher taking the time to explain the reason for an activity will make them feel heard, included, and respected. It will help them understand and respect why we do what we do. The same goes for classroom management and behavior expectations. Students are more likely to act in a positive way if they understand why they should act in a positive way, and are being asked to do so by someone they know respects them enough to not be punitive or dismissive towards them. Additionally, by modelling positive communication to my students, I intend to make it easier and more accessible to them to communicate to me if they are having a struggle or a need. Often, negative or disruptive behavior stems from a student’s unmet needs or emotion (ex. feeling confused and frustrated over a topic) creating an inappropriate coping mechanism (speaking out to distract everyone from the topic or getting themselves sent to the office so that they can get out of the assignment) If students know they can talk to me about that struggle without judgement for their vulnerability, I can help them redirect and avoid the disruptive behavior. Explaining and providing students with better, more productive avenues to meet their emotions or needs can help a lot in these situations.
In my student teaching in a middle school ELA classroom, by far the biggest challenge I have run into is student learned helplessness: students feeling like no matter what they are destined to fail or do poorly, and therefore they just shouldn’t bother trying. While one year or semester in my class is unlikely to entirely rewire that mindset, I believe that the core ideas I have outlined here will help begin the process, at least in relation to English. I have had several of my students this year tell me they’re “terrible at reading” or “just can’t write well.” A growth mindset could help them see they are not stuck there forever, and that each time they fail, A.K.A. read with difficulty or struggle to fix the grammar of a sentence, they are actually bettering themselves little by little. An inclusive but thoughtfully tailored classroom environment and lessons could help them feel comfortable as they work, guiding them into a positive headspace. Accountability in the classroom could help them learn their own power and how much influence they really have to improve their reading and writing. Communication could help them see the realities of their situation: that even experienced readers/writers have questions or moments of confusion, and that literature is subjective and language is moldable, so there might not always be one single correct answer.