Samantha Hess

K. Suk
EDUC 230-02 Education Field Experience
Spring 2019
Welcome Letter Rationale Statement

Standard 10- Leadership and Collaboration:

The teacher seeks appropriate leadership roles and opportunities to take responsibility for

student learning, to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other school professionals,

and community members to ensure learner growth, and to advance the profession. (New Jersey

Department of Education, 2014, p. 13).

Artifact: Welcome Letter

Date: January 31st, 2019

Course: EDUC 230-02 Education Field Experience

Rationale Statement:

This artifact is a welcome letter that is sent to the students’ families before school starts

to introduce myself as an individual and to prep the students on what to expect for the upcoming

school year. This letter includes major topics I will be teaching throughout the school year, as

well as materials needed for my class. I also included some information about myself in the

letter, that way the families can get to know me on a more personal level and feel more

comfortable meeting me in the beginning of the year. This letter is also a great way to get
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families involved in their child’s learning experience. This artifact correlates to Standard 10.i.4,

“The teacher works collaboratively with learners and their families to establish mutual

expectations and ongoing communication to support learner development and achievement”

(New Jersey Department of Education, 2014, p. 13). This standard emphasizes the needs for

mutual expectations between learners/families and their teacher. This standard also focuses on

open communication between families and their teacher. In my welcome letter, I included the

main skills that we will be focusing on throughout the school year. This gives parents an idea of

what their child will be learning, and what they can expect out of their children and my class. At

the end of my welcome letter, I made sure to leave contact information for the families if they

ever need to contact me. I left it welcoming and open for them to reach out to me for anything

they may need.

While writing the welcome letter, I had to think about what information is appropriate to

share with my students and families. The welcome letter that you send out is the families first

impression of you. I had to think about how I would want to be perceived and what I wanted to

openly share. Writing this welcome letter made me realize how sharing not only school-related

information, but personal information as well is valuable to the learners and their families. They

will see me not only as a teacher, but as an individual. After I finished my welcome letter, I

showed it to my mom and asked her what her thoughts were if she were to receive this welcome

letter. My mom said that she liked it because it gave a great overview of what the child will be

doing in class, but it also gave suggestions on how the parents can help reinforce these skills

outside of school. She also thought my personal information showed that I was excited and

passionate about teaching. My mom said I kept it brief and didn’t say too much about myself,

which was a good thing because teachers should not over share personal information.
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I can use this welcome letter as a template in the future. I can look back at the welcome

letter to make sure I provided the proper information that a teacher’s welcome letter should

include. I liked the way I set up and organized my welcome letter, so I can look back to get ideas

on how to structure the information in my letter.

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Reference:

New Jersey Department of Education. (2014, May 5). New Jersey Professional Standards for

Teachers Alignment with InTASC. Retrieved February 27, 2019, from

https://www.state.nj.us/education/profdev/profstand/ProfStandardsforTeachersAlignmen

twithInTASC.pdf