Ruth Lopez-Castro

Competency 3.I Reflection

Competency 3.I ensures candidates can advocate for ELLs and their families. I have met

this competency through experiences, my advanced practicum, and the courses I have taken at

Washington State University. I will include and discuss three different assignments as part of my

evidence. The first piece of evidence I will discuss is a children’s rights lesson plan. The second

piece of evidence is a response to a film about advocacy. The last piece of evidence I will

include is a meet the teacher handout.

In TCH_LRN 385 I worked with a group of students to create a children’s rights lesson

plan. While completing this assignment I learned more about children’s rights, how to advocate

for them, and how to teach others to advocate as well. As an educator and advocator it is

important to teach my students the importance of rights and that depending where you are in

the world you may not have the same rights as others and that this is why it is crucial to be an

advocate and have advocates. Something differently, I would have done with this lesson is

included a way to connect the lesson to the students’ lives to make personal connections. For

example, I could have students rank the rights in order of importance to them and write an

explanation as to why they ranked them in the order they did. Looking back at this and

understanding the importance of being an advocate, I would like to create my own flyer of

children’s rights to put around the school I teach at, to send home with parents, and to display

around the community in stores.

For the TCH_LRN 339 course I was required to watch the film “La Misma Luna” and

create a response on how to advocate for ELLs. Reviewing the response I wrote, served as a
reminder for how families may advocate differently based on their cultures. Additionally, in this

response I mentioned dual language programs and now I have had the opportunity to actually

experience and teach in this type of program. This has helped me better understand the

benefits of allowing and encouraging students stay connect with and speak their native

language in school while learning English. Some students in my classroom from my advanced

practicum came in know zero English and their parents were worried about this, but now 3 ½

months into the school year I have heard these students speak in full English sentences. This

was a very great experience and I am thankful for it.

Additionally, I was able to attend parent – teacher conferences this semester for my

advanced practicum and through this I was able to share my thoughts to families how I plan to

support them and extra resources. Each parent received different resources that explained how

they can support their student outside of school with academics and within the community.

The information parents received depended on their students’ academic levels in the classroom

and based on our observations. This also proves I am advocating for students because of the

resources I provide. This is important because families do not always know what they can do to

be an advocate and support their students.

The last piece of evidence is a meet the teacher handout I created for my advanced

practicum where I was placed in a Dual Language classroom where we teach in 80% Spanish

and 20% in English. In this classroom we had 16 students with 12 of them being ELLs whose

native language is Spanish. Although there are several of ELLs in this class, not all of them are at

the same proficiency level. As I created my meet the teacher handout, I kept this information in
mind. I created an English and Spanish version and sent both to all parents. Doing this showed

families I can and am willing to translate documents they may need translated.

In conclusion, it is important to learn about students’ interests, background, culture, and

family dynamic to be an effective advocate. The assignments mentioned above demonstrates I

have been working towards this because it shows I have thought about my students and how I

can support them inside and outside of school.