Standard Eight: Collaborative Relationships The competent teacher builds and maintains relationships to foster cognitive, linguistic, physical,

social, and emotional development. This teacher works as a team member with professional colleagues, students, parents or guardians, and community members. I chose this artifact because it is shows how I was able to build and maintain relationships. This artifact is a good representation of the artifact because it illustrates how I was able to build social relationships with my students. This survey was done when I started student teaching. I thought it was important to develop relationships with my students early so that I could continue to build on them as the semester progressed. I had each student fill out the survey and then had them pick three questions that they would like to share aloud with the class. I made sure that I also completed the survey and shared with my students so that they could get to know me better. I started off in order to break the ice and then we just continued around the circle. This was a great activity for me to get to know my students, their interests, and what they think of school. I used this information to plan my future lessons and create discussions and activities for class. This was a great tool to use because we got into a lot of fun discussions as a result of the answers people were giving and I think it really created a relaxed and comfortable classroom environment. This artifact illustrates my growth as a teacher as I take the next step in student teaching to build and develop those relationships with my students. I now have a much better opportunity to foster those relationships, in contrast to only being in a classroom once or twice a week. I now have the ability and means to bond with my students and use those relationships to guide my teaching. I really wanted to challenge myself to include and accommodate the various learning styles that my students said that they respond best to. So far I have created more visual and discussion based lessons, rather than lecture and reading based, since that is how my students said they learn best. Doing this activity really challenged me to take that extra step in getting to know my students on a more personal level.