Artifacts and Characteristics of the Novice Teacher #1 & #4

Characteristic #1, Life-Long Learner:We believe that the novice teacher should have a commitment to and skills for life-long learning.

• Definition: A novice teacher is a teacher education program graudate entering teaching. Life-Long learning is a continuing search for knowledge and understandings.
• Artifacts:
• Conferences
• Conference notes
• Pictures,
• Lesson Plans with something learned from conference

By providing these kinds of artifacts it is proving your drive to keep learning new aspects of teaching; such as, teaching strategies, differentiated lessons, classroom management procedures, etc. The world is constantly changing and so should our teaching practices so that we are meeting the changing needs of our students.

Characteristic #4, Facilitate Learning for All: We believe the novice teacher should be a facilitator of learning for all students.

• Definition: A facilitator is one who can either provide appropriate learning experiences and resources  or find someone else to provide them. Learning is the student's active process of building meanings and knowledge.
• Artifacts:
• Lesson Plans with Accommodations
• Differentiated Lesson Plans (Sped. 360)
• Character Education Lesson (Added the Rough Draft for extra Points)

These artifacts will provide proof that you are meeting the needs of all the students in your classroom. Each student learns in his or her own way and sometimes accommodations are needed. I recently assigned a one page essay for my Character Education Lesson and for my honors classes it was worth 40 points. For my English 12 class I provided them with the option to turn in a rough draft (or outline) for an additional 10 points. By accommodating lessons we are better able to meet the needs of each and every student.

Artifacts and Characteristics of the Novice Teacher #2 & #3

Characteristic #2, Effective Communicator: We believe that the novice teacher should be an effective communicator.

• Definition: An effective communicator is one who expresses and receives ideas, messages, or information through appropriate spoken, written, and non-verbal forms.

When you become a teacher, your not just communicating with students; there is communication between teachers and parents, teachers and students, teachers and administration, etc and effective communication is crucial. You need to be able to communicate effectively with parents because it's important to keep them updated and interactive in their child's education. Also, your lessons will flow a lot smoother if you are effectively communicating with your students. Your students need to be able to understand what your trying to teach (communicate) to them.

• Artifacts: Parent letters, Parent Communication Logs, Forms in text from Educ. 401

These are artifacts that you can actually use in your classroom to help with effective communication. By creating these parent communication logs we can go to our portfolios and just pull them out once we become teachers and need to communicate with parents.
It's also really good to see how to properly write a letter to a parent/guardian because you want to appear professional and look like you know what your're talking about and really care about the well being of their child.

Characteristic #3 Moral and Ethical Profession: We believe that the novice teacher should recognize that teaching is a professional, moral, and ethical enterprise, should understand moral issues and ethical practices in educational environments, and should have developed ehtical frameworks which facilitate effective teaching.

• Definition: "The terms moral and ethical are used here to refer to those value choices concerning actions and attitudes that affect more than one person or which affect one's own character, thereby affecting others" (Strom, 1989, p. 268)
• Artifacts: Professionalism, Character Education Lesson, Classroom Management Plan, Parent Contact Log

These artifacts would be good documentation of your professionalism in the classroom. When talking to parents/students/administration, they want to know your philosophies and classroom management philosophy to understand how your classroom is going to operate. By providing the character education lesson, they are able to see how you support the six pillars of education in your own classroom.