Educators implement effective planning, instruction, assessment, and reporting practices to create respectful, inclusive environments for student learning and development.
Walking into any situation unprepared will create a potentially tricky situation. Walking into a classroom with 30 students who are facing an infinite number of different challenges is another thing altogether. There is no perfect formula for how to deal with a classroom, and that is why planning is so important. Specifically lesson planning. As we work through the education program, there is an emphasis on how we create a balanced lesson plan that takes the millions of what-ifs into consideration. This is usually done through the Universal Design for Learning framework. A prudent planner may use the parameters of What if I have a nonverbal wheelchair-bound student in my class? As we meet our students and understand their specific needs and challenges we can narrow down the parameters and develop a more exact lesson. This is similar to assessment, how we approach a group of learners depends on their type of learning styles and their known background. It is very unlikely that we will know everything about students, and so some may become outliers that require vastly different educational supports but that is why school communities exist.
I believe that this is an area of development for me. I can easily uphold this standard but have not been faced with many of the challenges of an inclusive classroom. I over-plan my life to keep my students occupied and engaged with learning, but I would like to develop a stronger sense of diversity in my instruction and assessment. I have found that it is easy to backslide into giving out a score out of 10 style summative assessment. This leaves little room for flexibility between students’ needs, and developing an assessment that fully encompasses the learners’ abilities. I would like to demonstrate this standard through continued experimentation with assessment styles, and stronger connection and communication with families.