Joanna L. Spears

Background

About Joanna L. Spears

My Teaching Statement I have found that teaching is a culmination of personal and professional skills that include the teacher’s commitment to children’s academic rights and ongoing progress. Good teaching is a skilled balance of patience, flexibility, remaining open minded, creative practices and an ongoing openness to new ideas. Most of all teachers that are able to recognize and value individual student strengths and challenges are better equipped to honor student individuality, diversity and unique learning styles. The main strategies that I implement in order to keep all of the above in action, is to continuously remember that each student is unique. I do my best to develop meaningful connections with students, regardless where they are at academically. I find that taking time to get to know students, their backgrounds, and what they enjoy about learning is key. I also take time to build community within the classroom and deliver opportunities for Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and student bonding. Keeping these things in action assists the overall student body (of the classroom) remain engaged and assist in overall team building for the class. I believe that doing whatever I can to assist students in seeing that regarding of any barriers that they may have experienced in the past, their learning is essential and absolutely can happen. By holding this ideology close to my heart, I am required to remain patient and flexible during the learning process and allow each student to gain momentum in content mastery at a pace that is effective for their overarching goals, however, should not be rushed. Evaluation and assessment methods that I use are both formative and summative, allowing me to gain as clear of a picture of student’s needs, both individually and collectively. Since education is continually changing and evolving, in order to remain student focused, I read a lot and observe a lot. There are many other teachers that do things similarly as I do, or have their own gems of the craft. Since teaching can be a somewhat autonomous profession, I find it necessary to constantly put myself in collaborative roles and trainings that assist us all in enhancing our skills.