SBI3C

As a teacher in Ontario, the Ontario College of Teachers (2016) provides me with guidelines to frame my teaching pedagogy and practice, delivered in the form of “Foundations of Professional Practice.” In crafting my lesson plans for this website and any of my teaching, I take into consideration the five domains of the standards of practice for the teaching profession outlined by the college:

1. Commitment to students and student learning

2. Professional knowledge

3. Professional practice

4. Leadership in learning communities

5. Ongoing professional learning

The college also outlines ethical standards--care, respect, trust, and integrity--which they label as the “core ethics of teaching” and say are “implicit in the standards of practice…” (p. 6). Here, I will outline how foundational these standards are within the lessons on this site.

 

Commitment to students and student learning

A hallmark of this standard is that teachers “facilitate the development of students as contributing citizens of Canadian society” (Ontario College of Teachers, 2016, p. 13). The science classroom is a ripe arena for introducing students to issues that are relevant to society. My  “A Wild Decision” case study is particularly well-suited to inviting students to consider real-life issues and their role in the world around them. Rather than simply providing them with facts, this type of teaching asks students to take a stance. Asking students to make a decision, in this case a decision which will impact the community in which they live, is a powerful tool in helping them see themselves as contributing members of a community and society, something that ties back to a commitment to students and student learning.

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Professional knowledge

The college (2016) highlights the importance of striving to remain current in professional knowledge, underscoring the importance of a commitment to “reflect on student development, learning theory, pedagogy, curriculum, ethics, educational research and related policies and legislation” (p. 13) throughout one’s career. The lessons in this resource take into consideration a host of learning over the course of two years of teacher’s college, as well as extended research to understand how to incorporate some of the finest teaching strategies I have learned about into my lesson plans.

 

Professional practice

Drawing on my professional knowledge, I have done my best to promote student learning by applying, as mentioned above, the best tools that I have in my teaching. As the college (2016) says, well-informed teaching uses “appropriate pedagogy, assessment and evaluation, resources and technology in planning for and responding to the needs of individual students and learning communities” (p. 13). A return to the rundown of teaching strategies I used will show the ways in which my pedagogy incorporates diverse and varied means of teaching. The lesson plans I created include a variety of assessments, from an open ended rubric adaptable to whatever form that students choose to convey their learning in as part of the case study to the use of the plicker app for diagnostic assessment to the use of reflection and the Explain Everything! app to allow students to assess their own learning.  

 

Leadership in learning communities

The OCT (2016) points to the promotion and participation in “the creation of collaborative, safe and supportive learning” (p. 13) communities as part of the standards of practice. As a teacher, I hope to continue to be part of such communities, like the one created by the members of this site in the creation of this curriculum resource. As a teacher, I try to facilitate this safe and supportive community by providing students with ongoing opportunities to build trust and rapport with their fellow classrooms. My learning strategies are explicitly aimed at creating such an environment--jigsaw activities require whole-class cooperation to achieve a goal, and think-pair-share opportunities are part of the process of building trust. Students also have chances to work in groups, building their collaboration skills.

 

Ongoing professional learning  

The college calls for a commitment to ongoing learning that is integral to our students’ learning. The process of putting together this curriculum resource, as an example, required learning not only related to the curriculum, but also to the process of putting together a website. This is the kind of ongoing learning that we need to be open to as educators to provide a good example for our students. I continued to learn a lot in the process of putting together my detailed lesson plans. Lesson number 4, for instance, required me to learn about tinkercad, a platform I chose to use with my students to help them link their learning to technology and to build literacy in a new domain.

 

Holding these standards in high esteem is important. As the college (2016) suggests, our teaching should be guided by the belief that “teaching and student learning are inextricably linked” (p. 16). Reflecting on this, it becomes clear why we must take our teaching very seriously, holding ourselves to these professional standards and making sure that our professionalism is always evolving to meet the changing demands of our students. As a teacher, my ultimate goal is to facilitate in my students meaningful learning. Remembering this not only facilitates such learning in students, it also requires that I care for and respect my students and their learning environment. Facilitating learning requires trust between the students and myself as their teacher, which leaves no room for anything but integrity on my behalf.  Thus, it is by ensuring that this goal of meaningful student learning is always in the forefront of my mind that I will become the best educator I can be, dedicated to both the professional and ethical standards of practice.