Education Describe Your Most Important Application Essay

How are these expectations communicated to your students?

I communicate my expectations to my students in written and verbal form when possible. At the beginning of each lesson, I hand out the overview of the lesson, which outlines the key deliverables and points of assessment. This helps students understand exactly what I will be looking for, and provides them with a focus for their learning experience. I also send students periodic updates when necessary, if my expectations change or if I want to check-in with students.

How would you promote these expectations during instructional time?

During instructional time, I promote my expectations of the students differently depending on the lesson. I try as best I can to provide examples of what I am looking for, so that students are clear about my grading parameters. Moreover, I promote instructional expectations sometimes by showing why the lesson is relevant to the students' daily lives or at least, to their standardized test material. I might also refer to past examples of when my expectations were not met, or related anecdotes.

3. Describe the objective of your attached lesson plan and explain why you chose this as your objective. How did your instructional strategies address students with varied learning needs and modalities? How did you know that your students met the objective of your lesson?

The objective of the attached lesson plan on President Kennedy's reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis is to encourage critical and creative thinking in students, and help them to view history as a springboard for analyzing current events. I selected this topic because it reveals a lot about the leadership style and strategies of presidents; as well as showing how presidential administrations contend with foreign policy challenges. Moreover, the Cuban Missile Crisis example shows how the media plays a major role in administrative public relations. Each of these specific learning objectives is relevant to a comprehensive social science curriculum.

My instructional strategies clearly address students with varied learning needs. For example, I understand the importance of incorporating multimedia examples and instructional strategies. Using images is one of the ways that I can anchor students' attention and offer methods of interacting with and encountering material that do not depend on verbalization. This is helpful as much for students with learning disabilities as it is for students who are still learning English. The lesson also includes a film/video, which adds multimedia components. Finally, I acknowledge the role that peer support and collaborative learning play in the diverse classroom. By incorporating a group learning scenario, I was able to help all students meet the academic objectives of the lesson.

The evaluations and assessments I used to determine whether students were on track for meeting the lesson objectives include in-class observations such as watching who does and who does not participate. I also offered students the chance to participate in the group discussions, which were monitored. This helped me to see how students were thinking, and whether their critical thinking skills were being engaged. In addition to these ongoing assessments, I also included summative assessments in the form of a take-home essay.