Professional learning and EthicsOur job as teachers is to support students growth and learning as learners but also as people. It is our job to protect students from anyone, including members of staff. As a young educator, I am used to consistently taking classes and professional development because I still have much to learn. However, even if you have been teaching for 10, 20 or even more years, we always have more to learn. Just like what we teach our students, you can always improve yourself more. MCPS requires the Recognizing Implicit Bias training every year because it is a problem in society and despite this yearly training, there is bias in our schools against our students of color, particularly our students who are Black.
I noticed in my first year teaching, the accelerated math class, was almost entirely populated with students who are white, when our school was more than 80% Hispanic/Latino. I knew for a fact one of my students deserved to be in that class, but could have been denied the opportunity because he was on the spectrum and in ESOL. I fought for him to be put in that class and was admitted when he was in 5th grade. When I asked how he was doing in 5th grade, the teacher said he was doing great and he belonged in accelerated math. This taught me that we need to believe and fight for our students and give them the opportunities they deserve, no matter their background. |
Leadership and CollaborationAnother positive note for Google Classroom, is that teachers can share resources easily. My wonderful coworker is very adept to teaching reading and I am adept to teaching science and math. Therefore, through Google Classroom, we are able to "reuse" what our coworkers post exactly, or even make our own minor edits. We have divided the responsibility of creating and uploading the assignments. In the current situation, I am responsible for my accelerated math content, and I help my teammates edit the reading and writing content.
During this time, online teaching has become the only way to reach our students. I felt it was my responsibility to make sure members of my team were able to reach their students and upload assignments for their class to do. |