Artifact 1

Curriculum of Place Unit Powerpoint Showcase

Artifact 2

"Multiple Languages in Hutterite Colony Education" Research Paper

Artifact 3

Bulletin Board Reflection Paper

Artifact 4

Curriculum of Place Unit

Artifact 5

Advanced Educational Psychology Poster on the Learning Process

Artifact 6

Final Showcase PowerPoint

Goal 2 has helped me to be a better teacher by understanding more effectively how my students learn. I have learned to be a more effective teacher by meeting the needs of my students and their multiple learning styles. I have also grasped a much better sense of the diversity that does exists in my classroom. I want my students' learning to be meaningful to them and one way to do this is to understand the different levels of diversity that exist in my community. While we don't have a multitude of different races at Chester, we do have many socioeconomic factors that affect the students in my school. When I can make more connections with my students and understand them better I can relate to them better and I feel that I help instill pride in them so that they have more ownership in their learning process. It's important for them to have a sense of pride in what they learn and achieve and for them to do this they have to feel that what they are learning is important and meaningful. I feel that when my students take more ownership in their learning they are retaining more knowledge and understand their role as a student and how they will pass what they learn down the line into the future as they become citizens in our society and become adult members of our community. I want my students to be able to not only learn and educate others in Chester Area School but also in our community so that we create a community that is culturally aware and not bias. When my students have a real learning experience it is something that they don't forget. I try to create situations that they can relate to and I also have students create goals and rules for themselves in my class so that they will have more ownership in their assignments and activities that they do in my classroom.

Artifact 1 is a PowerPoint that I created to give an overview of my Showcase item which is my Curriculum of Place Unit. In this showcase item, I have included how I implemented this project this past year and how it went. I also included pictures of my students working with this unit project and I added in how I would adapt and make changes for this project when I teach it again. This project was a cultural unit on Day of the Dead. We did this project so that my students would learn about another culture and an important celebration in that culture's life and how that relates and differs to our culture. Then my Spanish students taught what they had learn to other students in the community of Chester. This PowerPoint is a rather large file that will take about one minute to open.

Artifact 2 is my multiple languages research paper. Doing this research paper gave me a better understanding of diversity and how multiple languages can affect a classroom and how students learn in this environment. The trilingualism at the Rustic Acres Colony helped me to have a deep understanding of English language learners and multiple language learning within a classroom. This paper helped me to understand more effectively how students that are multiple language learners learn and what it takes to create a good learning environment for them. This was a unique learning situation that I feel taught me how to become a better German teacher and English teacher as well.

Artifact 3 is a project that my students and I worked on. We made a bulletin board and posters that they put up in the school educating underclassman about the Mexican celebration known as Day of the Dead. This reflection paper that I wrote gave me a chance to think about how the posters and other things that they did for this cultural holiday helped educate all students and other people in the community here at Chester. I felt this was a great project because I applied my knowledge about this holiday to help my Spanish students learn about it and they in turn taught younger fellow students and elementary students about Day of the Dead and they in turn told their families about this day which was a great example of educating an entire community. Not only was I taking an educational role, but so were my students. We were all teaching and learning together and this was an unbelievably wonderful experience that took a lot of class time, but was so rewarding for everyone!

Artifact 4 is my Curriculum of Place Unit. In my Curriculum of Place Unit, I chose a cultural unit on Day of the Dead is to help students understand another culture and an important day in the lives of many in that culture. The Spanish language and culture is continually becoming dominant in the U.S.  The quest to understand this day and the Spanish culture will bring a new awareness and understanding of this holiday and how it relates and differs to our American culture and even venture into how our culture has changed from this holiday as well. Students will learn and strengthen their language skills and better understand how another culture thinks and perceives life. This Curriculum of Place Unit has helped me to be reflective about the Hispanic culture and involved the community of Chester in this community project. In this project I collaborated with the entire elementary staff here at Chester and had my Spanish I - IV year students teach kindergarten through 6th grade about the Mexican holiday known as Day of the Dead. It was a great collaboration and learning experience for the elementary teachers, my Spanish students, the elementary students and myself. My administration as well as myself was sent feedback about how great parents thought this multicultural project was. I was proud of my Spanish students and how great of a job they did educating the elementary students at Chester. Not only did the elementary learn from my high school students but my high schools students also learned what it is like to be the teacher and teach others in their own community. The elementary students also took what they learned home and taught their own families. What a great learning experience for our community! I feel that as a professional I must continually not only educate the community of Chester Area School but also the people in the community to show my involvement as a leader in education and my community as students learn at Chester and then go out into the world as contributing members to our society.

Artifact 5 is a poster that I created for my advanced educational psychology class to explain the learning process that a student goes through. I feel by creating this poster I was able to make a visual example of how a student learns, whether they are in the stages of short term memory, or they are starting to file their memories away into their long term memory creating a new schemata about how they think and perceive life and the things that they have learned. I feel that I have a much deeper understanding of the learning process that a student must go through with their thought process and scaffolding their information as they continue to learn.  I also feel that I tried to help students think more about their thinking processes which is metacognition, so that they retain what they are learning in a more effective and efficient manner. I used this example of an amusement park to display and discuss the learning process to my colleagues in an oral presentation.