Educaitonal Toolboxes
InTASC 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 (InTASC, 2013).
Brief Description of Evidence
In the Spring of 2020 in my EDUC 230, The Exceptional Child, and in my SPED 210, Collaborative Relationships classes we created toolboxes on Trello where everyone showcased and shared their assignments and resources they found to help each other excel in and out of the classes we were in. In EDUC 230 I focused on finding resources about IEPs, IFSPs, inclusive teaching, and controlling disruptive behaviors in the classroom. I wanted to focus on topics that could help both special educaiton teachers as well as general education teachers and answer some of the more frequently asked questions I had been hearing from myself and my classmates. In SPED 210 I shared a combination of infographics I had created in class and resources based on the topics our teacher gave us each week. My infographics were about the different stakeholders in education and the IEP process and the resources I shared ranged from training processes and codes of ethics to how a teacher’s language can affect students and tips for parents.
Analysis of What I Learned
Making these toolboxes taught me about the importance of collaborating with your colleagues and saving resources that can help you in the future. Searching for resources and documents that can back up a point you made or that will help you understand a specific teaching strategy can be time consuming and never ending, but keeping a list of different resources and what they focus on can keep you organized and provide easy access to important information later in your life or career. Having a growth mindset is important for someone that is constantly learning through life, like a teacher. One way that a teacher can develop this growth mindset is by reviewing and referencing things they have previously learned. Using these toolboxes I can look back on topics I have learned about and see how they might connect to new knowledge I have gained (Northwest Missouri State University, 2019). Having time for reflection and creating new ideas based on previous knowledge is a great way for teachers to change up their teaching strategies, how they handle parents, and ways they implement IEPs into the general education classroom. Being able to come up with new ideas for teaching that are backed by research and education is important if a teacher wants to create the best learning environment possible for their students.
How This Artifact Demonstrates My Competence On InTASC Standard 10
This artifact demonstrates my competence in InTASC standard 10, leadership and collaboration because I worked with my classmates to compile a vast amount of information about education into 2 toolboxes that we can refer back to later in life. I took the opportunity to lead the way by creating the space and the organizational strategies we would use to make these toolboxes so that we all could navigate them in the easiest way possible. Having these resources available will allow us to grow throughout our education and in the field. Knowing we can refer back to these sources to help us understand different parts of special education and the IEP process is important so that we can advance our ability to teach effectively and work collaboratively in the future no matter what questions or concerns we may have.
InTASC Standards. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.ccsso.org/resources/programs/interstate_teacher_assessment_consortium_(intasc).htms
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Northwest Missouri State University. (2019, January 18). Why is a growth mindset important for educators? Retrieved April 15, 2021, from https://online.nwmissouri.edu/articles/education/growth-mindset-important-for-educators.aspx