Throughout

my time in the Elementary Education program I have learned so much

about education and myself. I have learned about classroom management, SIOP,
differentiation, writing lesson plans, and much more. At the root of our learning throughout
this program has been the DESERT model of teaching. This mission statement has been the
guiding principal for all of our assignments. The DESERT model of teaching stands for
Diversity, Effective Pedagogy, Subject Matter, Environment, Reflective, and Teaching
Disposition. In order for us to better understand the different aspects of this statement, we
have done many assignments that correspond with each aspect. I have put these
assignments into an eportfolio in order to showcase how these assignments show that I am
a caring, competent, and qualified teacher.

I am a caring teacher. My assignments show that I care about what I do. I fell that

just completing this eportfolio shows that I care. I also have assignments that show that I
care. My educational philosophy shows that I care about teaching. That philosophy paper
and the reflection show my feelings about teaching and myself as a teacher. It shows that I
have stopped to think about what type of impact I want to have on my future students. My
classroom management plan also shows that I care. I feel that having effective classroom
management is caring. I have taken the time to think about what I want my classroom
environment to be like. I want everyone to feel welcome and safe. I also have different class
awards that I want to give out. Part of being a caring teacher is recognizing that a student
has accomplished something, even something small, and showing your appreciation for
them.

I am a competent teacher. I feel that part of being a competent teacher is not only

being able to write lesson plans and teach, I feel that you also have to be able to take

direction. You have to be able to look back at your teaching and reflect on what went right
and what went wrong. You have to look at your strengths and also you areas for growth.
That is the only way to become a better teacher. There are many reflections in my
eportfolio. I recorded myself teach a math lesson and then watched it and reflected upon it.
I noticed things that I do that I dont even realize I am doing. I also noticed things that I
need to be doing. I noticed that I needed to be using more hands on materials rather than
just having students think about things. I have also placed my math lesson and a self-
reflection on the lesson in my eportfolio. This shows that I am competent by not only
showing that I can write a lesson plan, but I can also reflect upon it after I have taught it.

I am a qualified teacher. A qualified teacher can write lesson plans and follow them

while they teach. They can also look at data collected from a lesson or unit and see which
students understood and which students are still struggling. My SIOP assessment project
does just that. Throughout that project I collected tests from my practicum classroom and
analyzed the data. I looked at the whole class and then I looked at a few individual students.
I was able to see how the class did on a test and then compare a few selected students to
the class average. This way I was able to see if the class a whole understood the material or
if they were still struggling. I was also able to see if the individual students were the only
ones struggling or if it was the whole class. Along with being able to analyze test scores, a
qualified teacher can also look at student behavior and analyze it. Teaching is not all about
the test scores. My student assessment profile demonstrates my ability to do just this. I
found three students to observe their behavior patterns. I observed them and then
analyzed what I would do as the classroom teacher. How would I help these students to

work on their behavior problems? This is something that every qualified teacher should be
doing in their classroom.

All of the assignments in my eportfolio demonstrate my ability as a caring,

competent, and qualified teacher. I feel that every assignment shows all three of these
qualities, not just one or two. This is my way of showcasing all that I have learned and how
much I have grown as a teacher through out my time in this program.