Strategies for Promoting Inclusive Practices (SPIP) has given me the gift of perspective. I ask my students daily to look at different perspectives, saying things like: “Put yourself in their shoes.”   “Look at it from their side.”    “What would they do?”  But in my practice, I think I can sometimes lose sight of my peers’ and my students’ perspective.  This class has allowed me to view my teaching style, my peers methods, and students’ struggles in a different way.

    As I evaluate my own classroom teaching style, SPIP offers me a different lens.  As educators, we can sometimes be overwhelmed with students’ plans and, in turn, individual needs.  This class illustrated global ways to make my classroom a more effective teaching environment.  Changing things like room set up, curriculum organization and presentation or even simple teacher/student proximity can drastically alter the results I can expect from my students with a full range of need.  There are also more local ways to improve classroom productivity.  For example, tone, connection to students, approach to the subject, and diversity of delivery meet the individual needs of classroom learning.  This class prompted me to rethink my goals for student expectations, as well as review my limits and logic behind these limits.  

My role in academia is unique in that I am privy to struggling students on the early end of intervention.  The Educational Support Team can be the first net to catch students who are developing barriers to their education.  This class not only assists me in providing evaluation for my own classroom, but I now have more in tools in my repertoire to share when making recommendations for struggling students.  We can more deeply explore levels of academic, social, and behavioral need.  Through the implementation of these interventions I can help forge stronger connections between support staff and the job at large.  I have a better working knowledge for the inner workings of the demand of providing services, and what is necessary to carry them out with greater efficacy.

SPIP gave me more empathy towards parent involvement.  Through our course work I have been able to understand the complexity of community and school relationships. There are obstacles around supports and communication flow.  Often it exists in parent meetings, phone calls, and pick up interactions.  When the school counselor is making contact, for some reason, it is never met with a smile.  This class helped me to see where the parent of a high(er) needs child might be coming from. Through this better understanding I have fostered the ability to construct and reinforce new positive parent/school relationships.  

Beyond my classroom teaching, SPIP will help me to connect with students as cohorts.  We can partner to make their learning successful; meaningful.  My role is to help children become expert learners.  I am not responsible for the content of their learning, but for the context of their learning.  I want to help them grow as people as they grow as learners.  This class guides me to be a better cultivator for student growth.  It has already changed the way I communicate with students, as well as having improved our relationship development.  I find myself and my peers looking for ways to teach students responsibility.  How can I make students personally responsible?  Responsible for their academics, for their actions, for their words?  What better way than asking them?  What’s more productive than to have them come up with the ‘how’?  What better than to listen to what they think?  In teaching them responsibility in this way, we also teach them respect.  By giving them the power to solve problems, academic and beyond, we are teaching them that we respect their ideas, opinions, and perspective.    

All of this being said, this was not an easy lens for me to look through.  As I have stated, not having been a classroom teacher, or having had educational training, there were some barriers to overcome.  I found that I had to research concepts, practices, and theory a little deeper.  I had to go outside of my comfort zone and do things I wouldn’t normally do.  Being in a new school this year, I had to test the boundaries of my unfamiliar colleagues a bit more than I wished.  This class also left me wanting more of a shared experience with my classmates.  It was difficult to connect with the undergrad experience, and reflect on the different roles my classmates are in.  They all share a common career goal that is much different from my own.  

    I am grateful for the professional stretch this class gave me.  I am satisfied for the academic growth it has afforded me.  I am thoughtful about the peer, parent, and student perspective it has shown me.  I have already seen some of the benefits of these changes, and look forward to the results of the strength it gives my practice.