Maine Common Core Teaching Standard #10 states that: “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.”. This artifact, the reflection questions for the parent teacher conference simulation meets this standard in multiple ways. The first way is that the simulation revolved around a meeting with a parent because we were concerned about a student’s performance and wanted to find out why the student was zoning out, and how to help him going forward. This meant that we needed to collaborate with the parent of this student to create a plan that would ensure the success of this student in my class. For this assignment I was also paired up with another peer, another teacher, that I had to collaborate with. This artifact showcases collaboration between teachers since we had to make sure we were on the same page about what was best for the student to succeed in our class so that we can discuss with Mom what the best course of action was.

This artifact has expanded my pedagogical knowledge in a myriad of ways that will no doubt ensure my success as a teacher down the line. Being able to have the experience of meeting with a parent of a student and working together with them to make a plan that will best help the student succeed was very helpful and enlightening. This situation will no doubt come up in my professional career and having a plan for it but also being able to be flexible enough to come up with something on the spot if the parent doesn’t respond well to that idea is going to be essential. One huge step in being an effective teacher is being a effective communicator. This artifact challenged me to effectively communicate my concerns and possible strategies to both my partner but also the parent in the simulation.