Throughout my journey towards becoming a teacher the school community has been a constant source of growth and support. When I think of a school community I think of the parents, teachers, administrators, and staff that make a school so successful. In my journey they have done the following: Provided a constant source of growth and improvement as an educatorsource of growth and improvement Shown me the numerous roles a teacher must balanceroles a teacher must balance Given me a plethora of new strategies to use in my teaching by allowing me to participate in When Kid’s Can’t Read book groupplethora of new strategies When Kid’s Can’t Read Offered a welcoming environment where I have developed into the teacher I amwelcoming environment

Source of Growth and Improvement Throughout my student teaching experiences my cooperating teacher and myself chronicled my experiences in a journal—she provided me with valuable feedback and I realized how much the advice from other teachers can improve my teaching The following are pictures from this journal:

The Roles a Teacher Must Play Not only did I see this firsthand through things like lunch duties, bus duty, and in general watching over students I also had the opportunity to create a bulletin board in my early field experience that showed me there was a lot more than just instruction to becoming a teacher. Pictures of that bulletin board follow.

New Strategies The following are some of the strategies I was introduced to as a result of the school book group. This experience demonstrated to me that the school community is a great place to learn new ways to help out students.

Tea Party Strategy This was a pre-reading strategy we used with our class. The highlighted portions are sections of the poem we gave to students. Working in groups they tried to construct a meaning by piecing their phrases together. They then were asked to write a gist statement

Probable Passage This is another pre-reading strategy where students try to place words in specific boxes. These are words picked out of the text they will be reading. They then try to make meaning out of this by creating a prediction statement: what do they think the story is about? Right or Wrong it introduces students to the text and gets them thinking before they read.

Anticipation Guide This is another pre-reading strategy that gets students thing about a topic before they read. Students have to choose whether they agree or disagree with each statement. This guide is about the Spanish American War and students loved debating each topic. They were really engaged and were soon avidly reading to find out what each statement referred to.

Welcoming Environment I have been lucky enough to interact with school communities that are open places where I could truly explore my teaching. The following are examples from the same journal me and my CT used. At the end of the experience she made a book complete with goodbyes from all my students.