Class information

SPED 775/SPED 775.50/SPED 789 – Student Teaching Practicum

approx. 40 per year students

From the syllabus:

This combined on-the-job practicum/student teaching seminar and supervision is intended to provide you with supported teaching experience, to expand your practical knowledge, develop your instructional skills, increase your repertoire of specialized practices, and deepen your responsiveness to students with special learning needs

Project overview

This project focuses on reflection of our identity as teachers and human beings.

Why did you select this project? How does it relate to identity and purpose?

I’ve always done a short form of this project in the student teaching/practicum class, with teachers sharing about themselves and how/why they entered the profession. This project asks them to dig deeper, to better understand their own identities and sense of purpose.

What advice do you have for other faculty who would like to implement a similar project?

I generally do this project at the end of class, once everyone is super comfortable with each other. There is more sharing that way.

Related materials

Assignment 7: Teacher Identity Work

At the end of our class, please share one google slide, one 8 x 11 paper collage, or a 3 – 5 minute video, answering the following questions:

Who am I?

Where do I come from?

How did I get here?

**I will be doing this assignment right along with you.

“Who am I?” is an important question to ask ourselves as educators. Who am I? Where do I come from? How did I get here? All of these questions answer the larger question of “What makes me the teacher I am?”

You can use the following questions to guide your work:

What are your talents and interests? How do you utilize those talents in the classroom?

What do you perceive as the most important aspect of your identity?

What are your ethnic, spiritual, racial, gender, ability, or sexual identities? How do they intertwine in your role as an adolescent special educator?

How did socioeconomic class or socioeconomic status influence your choice of profession?

What are your values and ideals? How do they present themselves in your classroom?

How do we identify ourselves? How are we identified by others?

We will present this work to each other in a 3-5 minute presentation to class. In person students will present in-person, synchronous students will present live via zoom, asynchronous students will record and share their 5 minute presentation.

This is an interesting exercise to do with our students too! Here is a sample lesson plan, which can be modified for grades 7 – 12 students (both special and general education).