Alex Hartley's
E-portfolio
The experiences of a science educator in the Boston Area
Middle School Science Resident with Boston Teacher Residency (BTR)
For the summer and fall of 2011 and 2012, I was a resident in the Boston Teacher Residency program.
During the summers, I took graduate level courses through Umass Boston.
In the fall, I was a student-teacher in a Boston Public Schools classroom. In 2011, I was in a 6th grade science classroom at the Timilty Middle School in Roxbury. In 2012, I was in a 6th grade science classroom at Young Achievers Math and Science Pilot School in Mattapan. As a resident in these classrooms, I co-planned lessons and co-taught lessons. I had one block each semester that I gradually assumed responsibility for. While doing my student-teaching, I also took graduate courses.
Boston Teacher Residency (BTR)
How do you effectively teach people how to teach?
What does an effective school-wide discipline system look like? Are there any urban public schools that are neither run like jails nor as crazy as a zoo?
What are the things that teachers absolutely need to know their first day in the classroom? What can they learn later on?
Can someone be an effective school administrator if they have no teaching experience?
At what point in your career do you have the knowledge and skills to mentor someone else?
Is there any template or lesson plan format that is useful in all situations?
How do you know if the students learned what you intended? What counts as evidence of learning and how can you gather this evidence throughout a class?
What does a good science lesson look like? Does it follow a particular structure or model?
What does it mean for something to be high cognitive demand? How can you scaffold a lesson, unit or year to help students develop the ability to think critically and successfully complete high cognitive demand tasks?
How do you design lessons so that all of your students can access the content?
Can you reasonably expect someone who is learning English to learn the language and academic content at the same time?
Can you create a list of qualities of a good teacher so that anyone who does all those things is a good teacher and that anyone who doesn't do them is not?
What does it mean to be a good teacher? What do good teachers look like?
To live is to wrestle with despair yet never to allow despair to have the last word.
~ Cornel West