InTASC Reflection
The 10th inTASC describes a teacher's ability to take responsibility and leadership positions in ensuring the growth, success, and advancement of not only the students but of the profession itself. Teachers must take leadership roles and be read to actively collaborate with parents, other teachers both inside and outside of their department, other schools, students, and community members. This InTASC embodies the idea that it truly takes a village to raise a child and a village to develop students and the community itself.
Leadership and collaboration are two of the most important qualities found in people that want to make a difference in their environment and wish greatly to witness and play an active role in progression. This, at the very least in my mind, looks for example like teachers taking on roles in developing the school community through the vehicle of their content area. In Spanish, this could mean incorporating the concept of school pride in a communication activity. For two minutes students could ask each other and answer the question “What is one activity that we should add to Pride week?” in the target language. Teachers, regardless of content area, can always do their part in dressing in school colours on game days (sports and academic).
Teacher should also be in constant collaboration with other teachers and with students. Collaboration with other teachers in the department can be in the form coplanning and always looking for suggestions for authentic resources. Authentic resources are becoming the ideal form of showing the students, consistently through the year, that anything written in the target language is written not for second language learners but for native speakers. Having this ideal is great because students are much more connected to real manifestations of the language and not manipulated one's, but finding resources that fit perfectly with the lesson that you are teaching has proven to be very difficult. What BCPS has done is provide an online, very Facebook looking platform on BCPS One in which foreign language teachers can collaborate and post the resources that they have found and what they used them for. Because this platform is new, not enough teachers are taking the initiative, the leadership role to reach out and share what they have found.
Teachers are in the interesting position of being enable to enact real change among their students, hopefully by bringing in the global community. Foreign languages does just that, but in order to be truly effective in involving students in a global community, foreign language teachers need to go perhaps outside their realm of comfort, outside of their immediate classroom. I have seen many teachers successfully enact a “pen pal” relationship with a parallel second language class in another country. Enacting such a global but intimate relationship with not only native speakers of the target language but also with students of the same age, just living in another country will greatly motivate students to have more of a stake in their learning.
This last InTASC seems to be in the vein of what the profession of teaching truly is: a system of receiving and giving constant inspiration from and to the teaching community all for the successful growth of the community itself and of the students learning.
Leadership and collaboration are two of the most important qualities found in people that want to make a difference in their environment and wish greatly to witness and play an active role in progression. This, at the very least in my mind, looks for example like teachers taking on roles in developing the school community through the vehicle of their content area. In Spanish, this could mean incorporating the concept of school pride in a communication activity. For two minutes students could ask each other and answer the question “What is one activity that we should add to Pride week?” in the target language. Teachers, regardless of content area, can always do their part in dressing in school colours on game days (sports and academic).
Teacher should also be in constant collaboration with other teachers and with students. Collaboration with other teachers in the department can be in the form coplanning and always looking for suggestions for authentic resources. Authentic resources are becoming the ideal form of showing the students, consistently through the year, that anything written in the target language is written not for second language learners but for native speakers. Having this ideal is great because students are much more connected to real manifestations of the language and not manipulated one's, but finding resources that fit perfectly with the lesson that you are teaching has proven to be very difficult. What BCPS has done is provide an online, very Facebook looking platform on BCPS One in which foreign language teachers can collaborate and post the resources that they have found and what they used them for. Because this platform is new, not enough teachers are taking the initiative, the leadership role to reach out and share what they have found.
Teachers are in the interesting position of being enable to enact real change among their students, hopefully by bringing in the global community. Foreign languages does just that, but in order to be truly effective in involving students in a global community, foreign language teachers need to go perhaps outside their realm of comfort, outside of their immediate classroom. I have seen many teachers successfully enact a “pen pal” relationship with a parallel second language class in another country. Enacting such a global but intimate relationship with not only native speakers of the target language but also with students of the same age, just living in another country will greatly motivate students to have more of a stake in their learning.
This last InTASC seems to be in the vein of what the profession of teaching truly is: a system of receiving and giving constant inspiration from and to the teaching community all for the successful growth of the community itself and of the students learning.