CONT 941 003 - Jeshurun Barrun

Throughout my time learning with Queen's courses, I learned that part of creating a welcoming environment for ELL students is welcoming their families, too. It is essential that parents and students feel valued in the school community. This is because"learning is strongest when schools, parents, and communities work together to support education" (Tesol, 2018). However, despite the amount of times that I have come across this topic, I only began to think of ELL parents as leaders after reading Colorín Colorado's guide .  Why is ELL parent participation not enough? In this document, Breiseth, Robertson, and Lafond emphasize that while parent participation is important, it should not be the only capacity in which parents can get involved. Parents, especially ELL parents, should be encouraged and supported to take on leadership roles too. ELL parents who represent the cultures of the school have a unique understanding of their needs and "are likely to offer successf...

If someone were to have asked me at the start of my Queen's certificate program if I was a leader in my school community, I would have said no. I would have said that I am only a leader in my own classroom (because I am the teacher), and that I would perhaps, maybe, consider stepping into more of a leadership role among staff after many more years of teaching. Honestly, the title of being a leader scares me. As I have shared in other posts, the amount of extra pressure, direction, dedication, and visibility that many leadership positions requires is daunting.  However, as I continued to reflect on the role and duties of ELL specialists, I simultaneously began to visualize myself more and more as leader. Ottow mentions in her Confianza blog post that "ELLs are the fastest growing student subgroup across the country" (n.d.). While her data is based on information from the United States and cannot be directly applied to my context, I am confident in saying that I know my d...

Despite studying and reading about countless teaching strategies, frameworks, and programs, I was shocked to learn that collective teacher efficacy tops the list of having the strongest influence on student achievement (Corwin Visible Learning Plus, 2019). According to Donohoo, collective teacher efficacy (CTE) "refers to a staff’s shared belief that through their collective action, they can positively influence student outcomes, including those who are disengaged and/or disadvantaged" (2017). I have come across many articles that talk about the positive relationships and environments teachers need to create within their classroom. But what stands out to me about CTE is that it directly tells us that staff need to do more than just work on their classrooms in isolation. In fact, the research on CTE tells us that staff teams who foster positive and goal-oriented relationships with each other can be the most impactful aspects of a students' educational experiences.  Group ...

Using technology in the classroom has always been something I wanted to be good at and have already started using a variety of technological tools. At the same time, I think I have misunderstood that just using technology does not necessarily mean that my lesson has been improved in any way.  I have often used them as substitutes for projects and assignments that students would have otherwise just been done on paper.  I feel that a lot of what I was taught seemed to equate any usage of technology with innovation, but I never really was taught what innovation meant. This has lead me to ask:  In the ELL classroom, how can I use technology in a truly innovative way?  Using Technology in Innovative Ways for ELLs As Couros (2021) argues, innovative ideas must be both new and better - the different way of doing things must lead to a better result. Learning about the unique needs of ELLs has pushed me to think of ways that I can use technology to not just supplement my stud...

One of my favourite parts about working in my ever-growing school district is that our classrooms are filled with so much linguistic and cultural diversity. It is exciting to walk into a classroom, knowing that different ways of living are being represented in the room. However, the diversity and differences have also lead to some challenges of their own. Disagreements and tension between teachers, students, and peers can come up due to mismatched understandings of roles, responsibilities, social issues, and the educational environment. Circle of Hands.  Retrieved from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/vectors/circle-hands-teamwork-community-312343/ Intercultural Competence I have learned that successfully navigating diverse classrooms requires more than just an awareness for difference, it requires us and our students to understand how to respond and act within those differences. The term  intercultural competence encapsulates this, as it is defined as "the ability to [commun...

Assessment is hard. During my Bachelor of Education program - which wasn't too long ago - I found myself struggling to understand and develop my assessment practices. I learned the lingo: assessment as/for/of learning, reliability, validity, know-do-understand. All of it. My school advisors were fantastic and helped me develop assessments in which I felt confident enough in, but I still felt that I wasn't getting a complete picture of my students' learning from those assessments.  The following year (last year), I got involved in a unique collaborative program: 3 teachers (myself included) taught the same 50 students all day, every day. Because of this, I was able to observe and learn how these more-experienced teachers assessed the students. They used tests, quizzes, written reflections - all things I did, too. Then one day, the students wrote a science test on genetics where they had to calculate the probability of inheriting traits. As my colleague marked the exams in ou...