Identity and Policy Brief Critique Paper Who is Ms. Peel, better yet who has Ms.

Peel become? In reading this paper I express the growth that how happened throughout my residency year and the challenges that come along with them. I also express how policy and reforms form me and my thoughts as a teacher as well. How do the readings from this course coupled with your residency experiences reshape the way you view yourself as an urban educator and the goals you seek to enact in your teaching? What do you now understand about your culture, privilege, and positionality and how those influence your teaching, as well as students, community members and other educators perceptions of you? Which aspects are potential assets? Which are potential limitations? What will you do to mitigate those aspects and/or perceived aspects? Ms. Peel as an educator before AUSL is not the same optimistic, high string, nave educator that is presented in front of you today. Doing my residency year I have grew beyond belief. My experiences with my reading along with the personal relationships that I have developed with my students, parents, staff, and admin has created a new teacher. One who is confident, reassuring, and who has expectations of herself and the people around her that was higher than they ever have been before. Although the qualities that I have listed before still remain in me I have grew with them and I smile knowing that more growth is to come.

There are several experiences that I can remember during the residency that has shaped me into the teacher that I have described above. For example holding expectations of myself and of my students is so important when teaching in an urban community. During one of my first classes this summer there was one that stuck out to me. It was a culturally relevant class where we taught to be aware of the surrounding that we teach in and how to affect our students. One of the requirements was to hold and maintain high expectations of our students. Some of our students come from homes where there is no education or support, violence, drugs, and/or abuse and there are educators whom can stuck themselves in this superman/woman phrase where they would want to save the student be lessen their work because of their situation. That is not setting the child up for the world around them, they are not going to go to college because the president of University of Illinois felt sorry for them because their mom is on drugs, or the Financial Aid Advisor is not gong to throw grants and scholarships at a student because they grew up in a violent home, or a student will not be the President of our country because the citizens felt proud of him for taking care of their four younger siblings while their mother worked and their father was in jail. Education will get all those things, and as an educator if we are too busy feeling sorry for a student who is going to educate them? As an educator we have to hold expectations of them that surpasses their dreams and it starts day one when they enter your classroom. I have learned to accept a student from any background they have came from but still hold them up expectations that may seem unachievable to them but to match it with believe and faith will get them as far as they can go. For instance I have this one student in my classroom Jayden whose mother had

died and father was in jail and he was living with his grandmother and several other grandchildren. Young Jayden was a very sensitive boy that would randomly burst out in tears when his mother crossed his mom, or would call himself stupid and dumb when e could not answer questions quick enough. Clearly Jayden was lacking support from home and was being emotional abused by his other older cousins. It came to the point where Jayden did not want to do his work and use the excuses that he was stupid of too sad to work. Although he is six and has already been through a lot in his young life it was my natural reaction to care for him and make sure that he felt loved, but it was my mentors reaction that shocked me. She would tell him that she was sorry about his lost and she will reassure him that he is not stupid that this is work that is capable of doing ad work that he will do. It took some time but Jayden is now longer calling himself stupid and has pasted the goals of a first grader. That is because a teacher refused to let him fall in the doubt that has been placed in his life. This will help me with my goals as an educator because it will remind me of the sole reason that I got into education and that was to educate. To follow that, as a resident following a mentor I did not know a lot of things that I would need to be independent on my own and some of the readings has prepared me to face that. For example in, The Flat World and Education How America's Commitment to Equity by Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond has given me a good view of what kind of support is needed to support teachers. This will help me with my goals next year by laying out what supports I will need to be successful. Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond suggests that the development of competent teachers should not be left to chance, so she challenges her

ideas to come up with a framework to assure that a strong professional preparation programs, the distribution of new resources, the wider dissemination of peer-reviewed research, and significantly more organized processes of informing teachers about best practices, successful programs and initiatives, and other tools needed by both administrators and instructors. This makes me challenge myself and what I need as an educator and from the support around me. What beliefs, values, ideas, or experiences shape your identity? How do these in turn shape your work as a teacher? As an educator, how will you take an active stance in building strong relationships (classroom, school, community)? What will you do if you meet resistance? My identity as a teacher is something that is still a working progress, but one that I am proud of. For instance one of the qualities that I hold strong to my heart is something that I have already stated which is to hold my students with the highest expectation and be constant with that. Another quality of mine is to be a no nonsense nurturer. This has come from my experiences with working with first grade. I believe that first grade is a grade where students have the most growth but on the other hand has the hardest time doing it. They are required to learn a lot during their second year of school but that is not an excuse the fact that they are young, so that is where I have learned to be a no nonsense nurturer. I have learned to teach and when a student is not buying on task I would correct them firmly but return back to with excited energetic teacher that the class had before I was misdirected and I will not hold that against the student, but instead I will expect him or her to perform at their best like I know that they can.

Building relationships come natural to every person. It first starts with your parents, then your family, friends, and eventually into building with a spouse into making their own family. But dealing with twenty-eight different families who have different backgrounds and believes make be a little bit more difficult than I thought. I have learned this year to incorporate balance in with being the relationship, and understand that although I teach younger children that the relationships start of them and inside my classroom and then they build from the community around us. First, in my classroom because I do work with a primary age group I have to show my students how to communicate with each other in our community. This is important because it teaches them how to talk to each other inside of the classroom so they can learn how to express themselves in the community. Along with the school I believe that there should be community builders to build the school together as a community to know and respect that school is a place for teaching and learning. I can be active in taking that role by creating a program that supports reading and that will bring the school together to reach a goal. Building relationships with a community can be formed together with education and having the parents as a role in their development in their students education. However, I believe that my home school site did an excellent job at joining the community by having a back to school bash that allowed the teacher, students, and parents to come together and build relationships. Within socializing Darling-Hammond suggests that within building these relationships that one most not be bias or have stereotypes to the people in the low income minority areas and I believe my home site does an excellent job with that and that

is something that I would like to incorporate in the future. When I face resistance I will take a step back and involve others. I will go to my admin and ask for advance from them so that they could help one with the issue. I know that I could resistance will come my way but I know that it is a battle that can be defended. How do you perceive policy advocacy in relation to your teaching and the teaching profession more generally? What policies and practices will you actively work towards to improve teaching and learning (for your students, for the profession)? How will you seek to continuously engage in larger conversation about the shape of education and reform? What will guide your thinking? What steps will you take to enable stakeholders (i.e., parents, community members, students, et cetera) to become critically engaged in the policy process? I think that my view on policy has expended more then I have expanded. Even though the students that I have taught are not in testing I believe that they testing policy is something that has peaked my interest this year because it something that I did not know that was so controversial. Which is a teacher suppose to teach to the book that follows along with the test or are they suppose to test from what the feel the students will best benefit from. Darling-Hammond argues that in comparison to other countries that do not spend their time teaching to the book and instead building relationship with the students and parents have better test score. Where on the other hand AUSL expects a teacher to have that relationship with the students and the community but on the other hand teach to the book because we are about testing and data. I believe that we create robots that way,

yes I believe that there should be standards and treating because that is one of the ways that we are funded but I wish there was a better way in doing it that supports the students as individuals. I believe that this will be a conversation piece that will come up in education for years. Even in Bad Teacher! How Blaming Teachers Distorts the Bigger Picture by Kevin K. Kumashiro the topic and expectation of teachers teaching to the book is one of the reasons why teachers have this label of a bad teacher because they arent living up to a county wide expectation that I believe is unrealistic. Being in a AUSL school that is very data driven I do not think that my opinion of testing will be highly respected, so in engaging into conversation in the future I will use the students and what is best for them as a guide to into conversations around testing. To engage outside sources I would like to hear their opinion and to use my guide in conversations to support their ideas without feeling them with mice. Because as a parent there are different expectations to be held and as an educator I cannot force my opinion on parents. So I would love to prove reassures and push parents to voice their opinions so that that fell as if they have a voice not only in the school but in their childs education as well. Now I understand that it could be a little overwhelming to have so many parents voice their many different opinions but with the support of admin and a well groomed system, it is something that should be done and will be highly appreciated.

Conclusion

In ending AUSL I would like there is so much that I have learned about me and my thoughts as an educator. I am proud of the teacher that I am becoming and I have to thank this residency year for that. I have learned to build relationships with my students, teachers, and the community around me. I have learned what it takes from a teacher to pull out the best in her students and herself as well. I have also been opened up to outside the classroom which is the policies and other expectations that are held over teachers heads. In ending I am excited into looking into getting into this field and starting my career, on my own, and facing the challenges that my come about.