Candace Monroe-Speed

SPED Seminar
5/6/15

Summative Reflective Essay

My beliefs about teaching and learning:
Educator William A. Ward once said, The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher
explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. My responsibility as an
special educator is to inspire my students to create, challenge, design, have fun, make change,
question, and become well-rounded citizens while learning in a safe environment. I believe that
education should be child-centered and hands on, especially for students who struggle to fit in to
the traditional classroom model. Every student has the ability and desire to learn. It is my role
as their teacher to tap into each of their strengths and interest to aide in awakening that desire
within them.
I believe teaching individual children is the foundation of great and effective educational
specialist. I believe in creating an environment where students feel safe enough to show their
goodness through all aspects of themselves. I demonstrate personal knowledge of students
disabilities and their effects on learning and behavior through the planning and implementation
of differentiated lessons and individualized education programs (IEP). These lessons consider
my students ideas, preferences, learning styles, and interest. They make students active
participants in their own education and development.
I believe students prior knowledge, personal interest and curiosity should guide the
content being taught. Within any content, I as a teacher should be able to create an integrated,
interdisciplinary unit that teachers the 21st century skills and grade level standards that my
students must master, while fulfilling their desire to learn the information important to them.

Students learn best by actively constructing their own understanding based on his or her
knowledge, skills and experience. This style of teaching gains and maintains student engagement
while using strategies that foster student independence, self-determination and self-advocacy.
Taking the time to get to know and understand whom each of my students is, is the key to
creating and maintains effective environments for student learning that suite the
social/emotional, developmental, intellectual, and cultural needs of all of my students. The
information gained from the knowledge of whom my students are allows me to use the
appropriate pedagogical skills during instruction, and the most efficient way to monitor and
interpret student learning. I believe knowing my students holistically is the only way I can
engage and support their learning.
I have been the afforded the opportunity to intern teach a k-2 special day class this school
year and have witnessed that by constructing student interest, curiosity and voice into the
curriculum their engagement, work ethic and advocacy have increased. This is most telling in my
classroom when it comes to the science discipline. For many of my students, Room 1 is the third
or fourth classroom they have been in. However, it is the only classroom that they have truly
been apart of and not kicked out of. Due to this, and their severe behaviors they have not had
much opportunity to learn material outside of the math and language arts curriculum, if that. At
the beginning of the year I asked what they liked to learn about the most. The majority of the
class said nothing. I attempted to preview multiple subject areas, watch them as they played and
listened to their hopes and dreams for the future.
This investigation lead me to discover that my students love to build things, they thrive
off of learning of systems work and then becoming an expert. My students want to get their
hands dirty and live the knowledge, not just have it read to them from a book. With that said, I

also have students that find joy in completing make workbooks. With all of this, I turned to them
and asked, Tell me what you know about science.
To prepare individual students to become agents of change who are active participants in the
curriculum building process, I believe that the education process should inspire students to
design, analyze, make and be innovative. Building with their own hands, designs that theyve
crafted which were informed by the learning that they sought after and then sharing that tangible
product with an audience, is a powerful component of learning. According to the 2013 Maker
Movement Manifesto, this is a philosophy I share with the Maker Movement and fits in with a
child-centered education.
The Maker Movement, tinkering, project-based learning, and integrated curriculums are all
valuable educational vehicles that make learning inspirational. They are tools that provide a
child-centered classroom that builds conscious and engaged students. I believe with these tools, I
can foster a safe, culturally aware classroom, which acknowledges and explores differences,
meets each child individually and will create dynamic, critical thinking, analytical citizens who
will one day create change in their communities.

My growth as an educator
This school year I have grown as an educator. Prior to this year I have never worked with
students classified as emotionally disturbed. I have proven that I have the abilities to meet their
needs, help them achieve their goals, teach them 21st century skills while making them feel safe,
supported and cared for. I realized that I am skilled at giving genuine and direct positive praise
while possessing an instinct that allows me to make educated and flexible decisions for the
success of my students. My coworkers and parents have given me praise for offering an

developmentally appropriate curriculum. Others have that I am where I am supposed to be when

I am in the classroom. The skills that I possess now are beyond whats expected of a first year
teacher.
Although these sentiments are flattering, I try not to let them get in the way of my growth as
an educator. I have very high standards for myself because thats what I believe my students need
the best of me for them to get the most out of their education. The late author, Alice Wellington
Rollins once said, The test of a good teacher is not how many questions he can ask his pupils
that they will answer readily, but how many questions he inspires them to ask him which he finds
hard to answer. I do not expect my students to come or leave my class knowing all of the
answers. My goal is to teach them how to ask tough questions and where to look for or make
solutions. I as a teacher dont know all of the answers, but I am always striving to better my
teaching practice and learn more.
To better my teaching practice and classroom management system, there are three
immediate skills I want to strengthen. The first is instilling independence within my students.
This year I implemented a center rotation system for language arts and math. In each center there
is usually an adult that leads a lesson or oversees students practicing skills. I want to be able to
have centers that students can complete successfully without adult help. In all aspects of the
class, students are continually looking for adult approval and asking for help regardless of the
difficulty level. For me to instill a level of independence within the students I will read Daily 5
and Caf. These two books embody a management system that increase student independence
and instruction.
Reading these books and planning how to implement them in my classroom is another
step to improving my teaching. Long range planning is an area that I struggled with my first year.

I knew the standards but I did not have a plan on how to approach each of them. This summer I
will make a plan for each grade level. I then want to take my students IEP goals and make units
that will teach and aide students in progessing their goals and standards.
Another area of growth for my will be communicating with all families consistently. I
made great strides in this area this year by meeting with families before school started and
making positive phone calls at least once a month However, I feel that I havent communicated
all student progress on informal assessments and the higlights of what is going on in the
classroom. To improve this I would like to have monthly newsletters that highlight the projects
that students are working on and include the candid pictures that I often take. The problem with
this is having everything translated. At my current location, availability of translators is limited.
However, I have built positive relationships with the people who can help me communicate with
my Spanish speaking families.