Educators value the success of all students. Educators care for students and act in their best interests.
Throughout all my practica, I did my best to meet the needs of all students in my classes. I designed activities that were a simple enough design to be doable by all students while being complex enough to challenge the exceeding students. My goal is always to provide opportunities for my students to showcase their learning in a way that is meaningful to them. One of the activities that I had my students complete was a project that demonstrated what science meant to them. They were allowed to demonstrate their thoughts to me in whatever way they chose. I gave them an outline and a rubric, but they got to design the presentation in a way that was exciting to them. The students had more than enough time in class to complete this project because I understand not all families have a computer or access to the internet at home. I wanted to ensure all students had the opportunity to complete the project at school where they could access a laptop if that is how they chose to demonstrate their knowledge. This project was also useful to me as a new teacher. I did not know any of the students, so having the students complete this project at the beginning of my practicum was a way for me to get to know them and their interests in science. Throughout the practicum, I was able to refer back to those projects to inform my planning, designing additional projects based on what that particular group of students were interested in. This helped me make their learning experiences more personalized for them which helped them succeed in my class. I also made it clear to students that they were always able to redo assignments or make corrections to old assignments in order to improve their grade. I let them know that I wanted them to be successful and being able to resubmit an assignment was a way to achieve that success.