Standard #1 – Learner Development
The teacher candidate understands how learners grow and develop, recognizing that patterns of learning and development vary individually within and across the cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and physical areas, and designs and implements developmentally appropriate and challenging learning experiences.

Summer 2015: Courses such a human growth and development, as well as being a mother myself, have helped to better refine my knowledge and experience with learning patterns in children.  I know that learning occurs in varied ways in individuals, and evolves over time.  Learning isn’t simply content area or classroom based, it is also physical, spiritual and emotional and found in the real world.  All of these facets must be taken into account in when factoring in how a person grows, and how this growth is measured.  Learning should be structured in such a way that it is varied based upon these specific needs and so that it sparks an individual’s desire to want to know more.

Autumn 2015:  We have a wide range of students in our chemistry I course, with higher performing students in both our chemistry II and AP physics courses.  However, in all of our classes we have students with exceptionalities, ranging from IEPs to academically high performers, as well as English language learners.  We strive to meet the needs of all of these students by thoughtfully planning our instruction, modifying and adapting lessons as needed to fit the needs of all of our students.  Along with this, we endeavor to talk with our students about their social and extracurricular lives and future plans so that we can help them reach their personal goals.  This also helps us better gauge when there may be an issue present in their lives, should there be a change in their behavior or demeanor in our room.

Spring 2016:  Students come into our room with various ranges of experiences, abilities and development.  It is my job to compensate through scaffolding for the experiences that students may lack, to differentiate instruction for all abilities present and to consider and adjust my instruction to meet the various levels of adolescent development in my classroom.  Initially, I had such a focus on trying to get students to do the math of chemistry but as the the year progressed, particularly after the stoichiometry unit, I realized that even when they could do the math, they might not understand the chemistry behind it.  This was a revelation to me.  I decided then that I needed to realize that, even if some of my students never fully grasp the mathematics behind the chemistry I teach, they need to have an understanding of the world that they live in and be able to explain or predict the behavior behind the chemistry standards.

Here is a link to my work related to InTASC 1.