Reflection 1

Standard 5.b. EDE 727

Standard 5.b. Professional Development, Partnerships, and Advocacy.
Candidates take advantage of professional growth opportunities and demonstrate the
ability to build partnerships with colleagues and students families, serve as community
resources, and advocate for ELLs.
Candidates participate in professional growth activities. They view their ELL students families as
vital resources that inform their classrooms and schools. They are aware of community
resources to assist ELLs and share this information.They know and understand public issues that
affect ELLs education and support ELLs and their families socially and politically. They promote
school environments that value diverse student populations and provide equitable access to
resources for ELLs. They collaborate with school staff to provide educational opportunities for
ELLs and advocate for appropriate instruction and assessment by sharing their knowledge of
ELLs with their general-education and content-area colleagues and with the community.
Candidates engage in collaborative teaching in general education, content-area, special
education, and gifted classrooms.

This artifact is a note that had been sent home to my students during my
student teaching placement. I created this newsletter to let the parents know what
their children were working on in class, what projects were coming up, and what to
look for at home. We also were planning a cultural celebration as part of our
culminating activity for our unit, so we invited family members to come into the
classroom and join us. During this celebration we asked parents to join us and
participate in adding to our learning of different cultures. Using the students
families as an additional resource provided for an excellent opportunity to build
further relationships. This event and newsletter demonstrated our value for
diversity and our desire to increase awareness.
My intention for this was to increase family partnerships and involvement
inside the classroom. By creating an opportunity to have all the families come into
the classroom, see what their child is working on, and even participate in our
presentations helps the class as a whole build stronger partnerships, and allows
parents to feel like a part of our classroom learning experience as well. The benefit

of this event was that it brought in many families that normally didnt come to class
events because of language barriers or intimidating; this event was extremely
casual, welcoming, and honoring different cultures- this helped parents feel very
wanted.