5313/5389- 98/100
Introduction
For the Fall semester 1 in 5313 and 5389, I worked with Lola, Stacie, and Lorena. I collaborated with these ladies the semester before and continued to this semester. All four of us have busy schedules as teachers and additional responsibilities with our families. We work together to complete assignments accurately and submit them on time. I am blessed to work with such energetic, positive, and determined ladies.
Key Contributions
We all uniquely contribute to the group. Stacie is like the leader of the group; she takes the initiative. She is the first one to check blackboard for updates and notify the group. Lola is our writer. She takes our writings and makes them better by adding words or phrases to them. Lorena is energetic; she brings lots of joy to our learning. Then there is me; I like to stay ahead and remind everyone of the assignments and discussions. I took the lead in making infographics for our e-portfolios.
Last semester we set a goal not to finish assignments on the last day. We have improved our timeline for completing projects a day earlier. We did not start with finishing assignments ahead of time, but we kept reminding each other. This is still an area that I need to improve on so that we have more time in other areas. Another area I can improve on is by participating more in class discussions and asking for clarifications on assignments. Someone else may be thinking or wanting to ask the same thing as me. I completed all class discussions on time, so my classmates could see my posts and comment on my reflections. Reflecting on my Creating Significant Learning Environment coursework, I translated the Growth Mindset and Power of YET into Spanish. I did this because I am a bilingual teacher, and to foster an appropriate CSLE, students must feel comfortable in my class. During Developing Effective Professional Learning for teachers, I reflected and started participating actively in my district’s PLs. By doings this, I learned new teaching techniques from other teachers and shared my success stories with them.
Supporting Contributions
Stacie starts the collaboration page, and I contribute to organizing the class information into tables with the class. I arranged another table with our names and e-portfolios links. I added links to our collaboration document to other e-portfolios that we look at as examples.
While working on assignments and looking through examples, I placed links to the e-portfolios on our collaboration page, along with notes of what was intriguing to us and specific notes from class that the professors specified for us to do or not to do. This was helpful because we could refer back to it anytime while working on the assignments; it kept us organized. I noticed last semester that we had difficulty finding documents from previous projects, so I linked them to our collaboration page for easy access.
I am also part of Dawn’s Group Me collaboration group. In Group Me, classmates post questions, clarifications, and e-portfolios. I take the time to read the messages and respond to the questions I know the answers to or refer my classmates to where they could find the answer. I also posted my discussions on blackboard, replied to classmates on time, and posted in APA format. I would change in the future to go back to the discussions, check if anyone responded to my post, and do a follow-up.
Although Lorena is not in 5313 with Stacie, Lola, and me, she was available for questions and any clarifications we had on the assignments. Lorena took the time to show us her work and other exemplary e-portfolios.
