Spink Master’s Portfolio 1

Standard #10: Leadership and Collaboration

The teacher seeks appropriate leadership roles and opportunities to take responsibility for
student learning, to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other school professionals,
and community members to ensure learner growth, and to advance the profession.

Teaching can often feel like an individual endeavor, left isolated with student needs and
day to day instructional requirements. As I teach in a remote village off the road system this
feeling of seclusion can be exacerbated in terms of support and resources. Collaboration
between administration and fellow teachers helps reduce this isolation but, perhaps most
importantly, the third factor of parent and community involvement really turns this venture
into less of a solo profession and more into a social partnership among those most directly
involved and invested. Western Governors University (2021) points out the benefits of
developing this relationship, stating that parents and teachers “can commiserate on the
student’s strengths and weaknesses, create a plan of action to strengthen those weaknesses,
determine which factors may be amplifying or hindering the student’s learning capabilities, and
become a united support system to help the student become their best academic self” (para.
1). These three benefits of creating a needs based plan of action, determining factors that can
be hurting or helping student learning, and creating a united support system are represented in
my case study report and my rights and responsibilities social studies lesson. In my case study
report I develop a plan of action with parents based on the case student’s needs and establish,
as a team, what is helping and hindering his progress throughout the process while in my social
studies lesson a village elder introduces the local ideas on rights and responsibilities and, with
parent involvement, helps establish a united support system to student learning and potential
concerns.
One of the important elements of communicating with parents and involving
community members in the teaching process is to build a more focused plan of instruction, or
plan of action, that takes into account cultural and specific individual needs. The American
Federation of Teachers (n.d.) expands on this idea, stating that “parents also benefit from being
involved in their children’s education by getting ideas from school on how to help and support
their children, and by learning more about the school’s academic program and how it works.
Perhaps most important, parents benefit by becoming more confident about the value of their
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school involvement” (para. 2). In my case study with a student that I’ll call Danny, collaboration
with the student’s parents helped form a plan of action that addressed how his guardians could
help him outside of school and aligned this support with the school’s academic reading and
writing program that we were working on within the classroom. Through creating this plan of
action the parents were more confident in their school involvement, further bolstered by the
results from the study that showed Danny’s increased improvement.
The first part of creating a plan of action with parents is to communicate the student’s
needs in the classroom and how they can be addressed at home. Jones & Jones (2016) point
out a significant factor in this learning process, noting that “students’ achievement gains and
positive behavior can be significantly increased when students’ caregivers are actively involved
with teachers in a positive manner” (p. 131). The case study that I performed involved a
student, Danny, whose reading and writing skills lagged behind his third grade peers. Danny
was very quick mathematically and capable in non-reading and writing exercises but in
kindergarten he had become very ill and missed over half of the year. Ever since this illness his
reading ability was much lower than his classmates. After working with Danny one on one I
realized that he was very strong with his semantic cues when the material involved hunting or
basketball but struggled in subjects that were foreign to him. His graphophonics were pretty
weak as was his syntactic cueing system but this had improved since the beginning of the year.
When I met with Danny’s parents, I outlined his strengths and the reasons for the discrepancy
between his reading and math capabilities. Starting off with a simple step, we decided that it
would be best to work on his reading fluency through ten minute reading sessions at home
each night, first starting with books based on hunting and basketball and then slowly expanding
his background knowledge into different sports and activities. In this way, we could grow his
semantic knowledge while gradually increasing his deciphering and decoding skills along the
way.
The next step in the process to create an action plan is to align the school activities with
the parents’ help from home in order to efficiently supplement both ends of the experience.
McCarrier et al. (2000) agree, stating that “as a teacher, you must recognize the strengths and
needs of individuals, and draw out common patterns across small or whole-class groups to
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guide your lesson planning” (p. 169). In terms of the whole-class group at school, we were
working on questioning as our reading strategy and the six traits in writing. I didn’t want to
throw too much new information or activities at Danny while he was building up his reading
fluency and background knowledge so the parents and I agreed that, in addition to his ten
minutes of reading each night, he would fill out one sticky note with a question, as evidenced in
the case study student artifacts, and then complete a five minute writing prompt based on
whichever trait we were working on during that time. Although this was a pretty simple
alignment, it put both myself and the parents on the same page and reinforced the learning
methods from both ends of the equation.
Creating a plan of action and an open line of communication with parents is great but if
there is little follow up on the instructor’s part, then interest might die off after a period of
time. Jones & Jones (2016) point out a solution to this, stating that “one way teachers can
encourage students’ parents/guardians to be involved in their children’s education is for
teachers to find ways to communicate to parents their sincere respect for the family, their
culture, and their role in their child’s education” (p. 129). In order to encourage this continued
parent involvement, I made a concentrated effort to connect with the parents each week,
thanking them for their support and updating them on Danny’s progress. In the case study I
used the Silvaroli reading test to monitor Danny’s growth and as hoped, he went from reading
40 words correctly to 50 words in the follow up test with one more self-correction. In his
spelling inventory test he correctly spelled almost half of the words with very close attempts on
the harder words involving suffixes and multiple syllables. I relayed improvements like this to
the parents at the end of each week, encouraging them along the way and strengthening the
parent-teacher connection throughout the case study.
Although creating a plan of action and discussing what a student needs from the
academic point of view is a good first step, the other half of the picture involves the student’s
home life and factors outside of school. As stated by the American Federation of Teachers
(n.d.), “by having more contact with parents, teachers learn more about students’ needs and
home environment, which is information they can apply toward better meeting those needs”
(para. 5). Both learning about students’ needs and the home environment are extremely
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important when fully understanding and targeting instruction for an individual. Danny’s
parents helped illuminate me on his upbringing and home life in general while pointing out
preferred activities that he enjoyed, creating more of a background with which I could work
with in the case study.
From the parent’s side of the communication, understanding the student’s needs
helped augment the original instruction in school. Many students that have had trouble
reading in my class the past two years have had very little interaction with books outside of the
classroom. Finn (2009) supports this observation, stating that “most participants did not
remember being read to as children or seeing their parents reading or writing very often” (p.
228). In the case of Danny, this was mostly true. Aside from the illness that took away most of
Danny’s kindergarten year, his parents told me that they hardly read to him as a child growing
up. However, the dad did tell him stories about Raven and Polar Bear growing up, acting out
the tales. Learning this, I strongly advocated that the dad continue telling his stories to Danny
and sent home a book mirroring these stories, such as The Polar Bear Son: An Inuit Tale
(Dabcovich, 1997). Understanding Danny’s upbringing and literary background helped add
more nuance to my instructional approach during the overall case study and throughout the
year in general.
The second possible benefit from communicating with parents is constructing a better
picture of the student’s home life. In this case, I had noticed that Danny was coming into school
tired most mornings. When I first talked to his parents they told me that lived in a house with
19 other people at any given time and rarely had time to himself. This led to my second goal in
the case study, giving Danny some time and space at school to independently read and
decompress. This problem is echoed on a larger scale by Allen (1995), who states that “one
problem I’ve encountered often in my years of teaching is getting all the students involved in
the community effort of building the classroom environment by organizing the space and
activities” (p. 39). Although the case study might be refer to a more specific classroom
environment building effort, encouraging Danny to choose books that he is interested in and to
set aside quiet time during independent work to read was a huge step forward in building his
own learning environment and organizing personal space for him to grow in. Combining my
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knowledge of Danny’s upbringing, needs as a student, and home life helped me approach the
case study with a much clearer view of all of the outside factors surrounding his academic
situation.
While establishing a strong connection with parents and creating a plan of action are
great first steps to building a strong educational support system for students, involving
important members of the community in the education can further enhance student needs and
goals. Driscoll (2022) elaborates on this idea, noting that “it’s great for students to understand
who is in their support system. It is even better that they know when to access those people”
(para. 9). Within my social studies lesson, I asked a village elder to introduce the topic of rights
and responsibilities in a local context, using his knowledge and connections with the students to
enhance their learning and comfort level with the subject and lending his support to the lesson
and students involved. Just introducing another member of the community gave students
another perspective and person that they could talk to about the material and reach out to if
they needed.
The first factor for students, understanding who is in their support system, is the first
step to building a wider foundation for students to build off of in their academic and personal
pursuits and struggles. The village that I teach in is almost entirely Inupiaq, a culture that I had
very little experience with before last year. Involving local community members and staff in the
teaching process was one way to mitigate this lack of cultural experience within the classroom.
This addresses the critique laid out by Schmuck & Schmuck (2001), that “school staffs often do
not take concerted action to cope effectively with external givens” (p. 294). The external given
in this case, the Inupiaq culture that all of the students shared within the class, led me to ask
the head of the native council, who was also the maintenance chief at the school, to introduce
the local idea of rights and responsibilities as it applied to the village. The lesson itself was an
introduction to the Alaskan Civil Rights movement and Elizabeth Peratrovich’s life, so starting
from the local viewpoint helped present the idea from an accessible perspective for the
students. Just as importantly, supporting the students learning with a community member built
an additional connection for students to draw from and a knowledgeable source that they
could communicate with when needed.
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While introducing community members into the educational framework is a good start,
teaching students when they can access these individuals for support elevates the value of
these support sources even more. As Fisher et al. (2018) point out, “engaged students have
someone in their life they can turn to for support, encouragement, and praise” (p. 153). Not
only did the village elder make an impact in the social studies lesson that he was present for, he
made a point of dropping by the class whenever he could and interacting with the students on a
regular basis. Whenever students had questions I recommended that they ask the elder in the
school or involve their parents when possible, encouraging individuals to branch out to multiple
sources for answers. While promoting this approach to the students, I made sure to keep up
open communication with parents, as in the case of Danny’s parents in the case study, in order
to support the praise and encouragement from both angles.
In the end, teaching can sometimes seem like a lonely, and daunting, profession with
numerous students and situations calling for attention. This endeavor doesn’t have to be
completed alone however, with valuable support sources in parent guardians and members
throughout the community ready and willing to help students out in their academic and social
lives. Specifically speaking, when communicating with parents it is invaluable to construct a
plan of action with guardians when possible, determine factors that can help or hurt students’
performances, and create a united support system for the individuals under a teachers care.
Although this might seem like a hard objective to accomplish, often parent-guardians and
individuals in the community are more than willing to help and merely need an open line of
communication and the right instructional tools to help contribute to a student’s success in and
out of the classroom. The stronger a students’ support structure, the greater their chance for
growth and healthy development in the classroom, making this connection with parent
guardians and community members an invaluable source to strive for.

References
Allen, J. (1995). It’s never too late: Leading adolescents to lifelong literacy. (C. Coman, Ed.)
Heinemann.
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American Federation of Teachers. (n.d.). Building parent-teacher relationships. Reading Rockets.

https://www.readingrockets.org/article/building-parent-teacher-relationships
Dabcovich, L. (1997). The polar bear son: An Inuit tale. Clarion Books.
Driscoll, L. (2022). Helping students understand their support system. Social Emotional
Workshop. https://www.socialemotionalworkshop.com/sel-skills-support-system/
Finn, J. P. (2009). Literacy with an attitude: Educating working-class children in their own self-
interest. (2nd ed.). Suny Press.
Fisher, D., Frey, N., Quaglia, R. J., Smith, D., & Lande, L. L. (2018). Engagement by design:
Creating learning environments where students thrive. (J. Nemar, Ed.) Corwin: Fisher &
Frey.
Jones, V., & Jones, L. (2016). Comprehensive classroom management: Creating communities of
support and solving problems. (11th ed.). Pearson. Johnston, J.
McCarrier, A., Pinnell, G. S., & Fountas, I.C. (2000). Interactive writing: How language & literacy
come together, k-2. (L. Bridges, Ed.). Heinemann.
Schmuck, R. A., & Schmuck, P. A. (2001). Group processes in the classroom. (8th ed.) McGraw
Hill.
Western Governors University. (2021). Harnessing parent teacher collaboration.
https://www.wgu.edu/blog/harnessing-parent-teacher-collaboration2107.html#close