Spring 2019 Completers’ Perceptions of their Program Preparedness

When asked to describe their strengths, teacher candidate offered comments such as the following:

• My curiosity and interest in improving my own performance and consistency and my interest in learning more about my content area, teaching, my students and research based approaches.
• Lesson planning, working with other department teachers, challenging gifted students, teaching aligned with NGSS standards.
• Teaching to the whole child and demonstrating mutual respect with students.
• My area of strength is being able to connect with the diverse needs of the students. Being able to see the students how they are and who they can become.
• I feel that my areas of strength are being able to relate to the children (from having my own) and engaging my students in all lessons! WE have FUN while we learn!
• I have an extremely strong report with my students and try my best to build them up. I really want them to feel special and unique in that they are bilingual. I try to vary activities in order to make learning fun, while still challenging my students.
• I find my strengths in behavior and classroom management, in terms of finding effective ways to connect with and motivate students in order to teach the lesson. I have a strength in connecting with my students and building a report in order to have more buy in from students. I find that multitasking is a huge part of the special education world, and I feel strongly in my skills of handling many tasks at once.
• I feel that I am able to plan well for lessons. I know how to plan instruction and assessment and how those should go hand in hand. I can also plan out how a lesson should look (warm up, prior knowledge, instruction, small groups, closing, etc.).
• I am creative in my lesson plans, and try to incorporate a variety of materials for both whole-group and independent work. I make a conscious effort to cater my lessons and materials to be suitable for all students learning. I am able to form very strong bonds with my students, and am able to understand them and their disabilities.
• My particular area of strength is the ability to make connections and build relationships with the students so that they are interested in learning and want to be engaged. I love learning their likes and dislikes and using those within the classroom and lesson to help students want to learn.

When asked how they have made an impact on student learning, the teacher candidates noted demonstrating NDMU’s efforts to comply with CAEP standard 4 (Component 4.1 regarding Impact on P-12 learning and development):

• I think I had a positive impact as evidenced by my students achieving 75% or better on classroom based assessments, and in the event this did not occur, I was able to adjust instruction to help them get there.
• I believe that I was able to build strong relationships with my students and adapt my teaching to meet the needs of my individual students. I used exit tickets frequently to measure learning and to inform instruction.
• I believe I have helped my students to learn not just about the subject area, but also to learn more about themselves their strengths and weaknesses in academic settings and in their language proficiency and cultural awareness, and how it is that they learn. I measured students learning in various ways of formative and summative assessments designed to take various lengths of times, some more formal than others, some based on rubrics, others on numerical standards. My goal is to assess students so that I did not have a method that would unfairly advantage or disadvantage students due to the assessment method, I had some that were made between me and colleagues, some that were standardized, and the bulk of which I created. I also included performance assessments and self-reflection and self-assessments throughout the year to measure what the student's perception of their learning is, and of their growth, against my perception of their learning and growth. I designed these methods to measure comprehensibility in their communications, as well as proficiency in the 5 modes of communication and culture.
• I was able to make strides with students during my action research. I measured this with pre and post testing.
• I have seen my students make incredible growth! I am so proud of them because I see them utilizing the vocabulary we have studied, even when not in my class. They make mistakes but are not afraid to play with the language, which is a major goal of mine. I measured their learning with summative and formative assessments, ranging from comprehension checks during discussions to formal Socratic exit tickets.
• I believe I had a strong impact on student learning. I measured student progress through progress reports, observational data, grades, and formative verbal assessment throughout each lesson.
• Offering a new perspective and fresh ideas helped students who were struggling with content. I feel that I developed positive relationships with my students. Many of the students that I worked with have difficult home lives and learning disabilities. Having another adult who cares about them and believes in their abilities is extremely important for these students. I feel I was able to provide that for many of my students. I measured the learning of my students through formal and informal assessment but also by observing their overall growth. Many students are working on communication skills and social interactions. I measured these by observing their progress and noting when they are using the strategies they have been taught.
• Prior to the start of each unit, I did pre-assessments to gauge where my students were. During lessons, I did formative assessments through observations and collecting recording sheets. At the closure of each unit, I did summative assessments through exit tickets.
• I impacted the learning of my students by building relationships with them during work and play time. I made my lessons engaging by having them on both the board and the students' iPads. I measured the learning on my students by asking multiple formative assessment questions on the iPad during the lesson and taking data on the number of prompts needed (if any) students needed to complete their exit tickets at the end of the lesson.