Promotes Equity
As teachers, it is incumbent upon us to offer each of our students an educational setting where their ability to prosper is optimized. On a daily basis, this is the type of environment that I endeavor to provide my students with. The first step in this process is to cultivate the belief in each student that they can be successful in acquiring the knowledge and skills that we've been tasked with teaching them.
In an effort to expose students to the power of positive thinking, the following quotes are posted around my classroom:
- "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." - Albert Einstein
- "If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time." - Steve Jobs
- "Every child is gifted. They just unwrap their packages at different times." - Anonymous
- "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas A. Edison
- "You can do anything, but not everything." - Anonymous
- "You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you had to overcome to reach your goals." -Booker T. Washington
- "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." - Wayne Gretzky
- "Don't worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don't even try." - Jack Canfield
- "Tough times never last. But tough people do." - Dr. Robert Schuller
One of the benefits of exposing my students to the power of positive thinking is that it instills in them the belief that effort is a key to achievement. Each of my students is aware of my core belief that the only failure is the failure to try.
In order for students to be able to fully access the curriculum, in addition to confidence that they can succeed, is the need that they feel a connection to what they are learning. Feeling that what they are learning is relevant to them, helps them maintain the level of effort required to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to become effective programmers and web developers.
Since not all students come into the Programming and Web Development technical area with the same background or abilities it is sometimes necessary to offer students instruction targeted at their capabilities. Differentiating instruction is adapting curriculum (what is taught or content), instruction (how it is taught, or process) and assessment (how it is assessed, or product), based on the different levels of readiness, learning styles, and interest of the students. By differentiating instruction, I am able to provide each student with their best chance of grasping the concepts being taught and afford them with the best opportunity to demonstrate the level of mastery that they have been able to achieve.
This mastery of the skills being taught is particularly important in Career Technical Education (CTE) because students are engaged in the acquisition of career skills that in many cases will be applied in the workplace both during their high school careers (internships/co-op) and/or immediately upon their graduation, as employees in their chosen careers. By providing students with a variety of relevant hands-on activities, teachers provide student with the opportunity to develop and practice the skills that will serve as the cornerstone for their careers.
Providing students with choices in the activities they complete in order to learn and demonstrate these career skills keeps them more engaged, leads to a greater sense of ownership on the part of the student and increases the level of pride they feel with respect to their achievements. Also, when lesson is effectively delivered using differentiated instruction, each student is provided with a means of exhibiting their level of competence relative to Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning.
In this climate of No Child Left Behind, it is it far too easy for gifted and talented students to become complacent as remedial assignments are given to the entire class. Instead teachers can have students work at varied levels of the same task. In this way, teachers can ensure that students explore ideas and utilize skills at a level that builds upon their current knowledge and provides them with an opportunity for growth. Students work at varied degrees of difficulty on their tasks exploring the same essential question while working at different levels of thought.
An example of how I differentiate instruction in my area, Programming and Web Development is an assignment where students are given the task of designing and developing a webpage that simulates a web site that would be used to order magazine subscriptions. The assignment includes a list of minimum requirements that the site must have in order to be considered complete as well as a simple sketch of an acceptable outline. Students who lacked the skill level necessary to complete a more robust design are free to utilize the sketch and write the HTML code necessary to develop the page. Students who lacked the skills necessary to develop a page that met the minimum requirements are allowed to develop an alternative page that was more in line with their skill level, perhaps a profile page for a single magazine. On the other hand, students with a higher skill level are free to design a more feature filled web page that provided them with an adequate challenge.
Another way that I support my students is by being available to all students for an hour of extra help on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 2:30 until 3:30. The school provides late busses to provide students with transportation home after these extra help sessions so no student is unable to take advantage of these sessions as a result of a lack of transportation.
I routinely include web design and development assignments force students to research their communities or to take a position on political campaigns or other election like the 2014 ballot questions and present that viewpoint in the form of a webpage. The final exam for freshman students requires them to assume the role of a web developer contracted to design and develop a website for their home town intended to be used by someone newly relocated to the area.
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Standard D - Promotes Equity |
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Indicators |
Evidence |
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1. Encourages
all students to believe that effort is a key to achievement. 2. Works to promote achievement by all
students without exception. 3. Assesses the significance of student
differences in home experiences, background knowledge, learning skills,
learning pace, and proficiency in the English language for learning the
curriculum at hand and uses professional judgment to determine if
instructional adjustments are necessary. 4. Helps all students to understand American civic culture, its underlying ideals, founding political principles and political institutions, and to see themselves as members of a local, state, national, and international civic community. |
Formal Observation Report (Highlighted) Formal Observation Report (Highlighted) Differentiated Instruction Passage
Hometown Website - Freshman Final Exam |