BRENDAN C. A. MENG

First and foremost, I believe the teacher’s duty and responsibility is to the child; each and every child. I believe a great and highly effective teacher invests him or herself in the interests and needs of each individual student to tailor relevant, rigorous, and meaningful curriculum and learning activities accordingly so students may develop into collaborative, creative, critical, and effective thinkers and communicators as they continue their journeys as lifelong learners. Paramount to my duties as a highly effective teacher is the ability to establish a safe and nurturing learning environment which breathes support and encourages success. I believe in providing the platform upon which my students can realize and reach their full potentials in a complex and ever changing world through relevant, rigorous, and engaging instruction. To do so—with the goal of providing educational equity through increased opportunities for all students—I strive to possess the attributes of being compassionate, understanding, and unassuming about my students. I believe the most holistic approach to this ideal is to understand each of my student’s background and circumstances outside of school through an increasingly culturally responsive lens. I believe students acquire much more than just content from every teacher. This belief keeps me operating and displaying a growth mindset by embodying Costa and Kallick’s “Habits of Mind.” Valuation of hard work, collaboration with colleagues, the consistency to show up every day for my students, and delivering each lesson through a No-Nonsense Nurture model of pedagogy ensures that high academic and behavioral expectations of data-driven instruction are attainable.

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As multiple intelligences theorist, Howard Gardner, proclaimed, “the biggest mistake of the past centuries in teaching has been to treat all children as if they were variants of the same individual, and thus to feel justified in teaching them the same subjects in the same ways.” Students’ individual learning styles, interests, skills, abilities, and achievement levels are the primary variables influencing the instructional choices, accommodations, and modifications I make and provide in my classroom daily. In order to reach each and every student I believe in providing differentiated instruction to fulfill these factors for each student without lowering academic expectations. I believe there are significant positive metacognitive effects of scaffolding layers of high quality, customized instruction on a student’s learning. Through hard work, careful organization, and smart and deliberate planning, I successfully allow a student’s mind to comprehend subject matter in a way that makes sense to them. Additionally, by assessing where each student’s comprehension of content knowledge and abilities lies, and by establishing an open-dialogue-based relationship, I believe in providing the inviting platform that will allow for us to achieve high academic and personal goals together.

 

When focusing on students' development, I operate within what Vygotsky described as the “zone of proximal development”: to teach skills to a student by meeting them at the intersection of challenge and ability.

Studying current student achievement is the only appropriate beginning for planning responsive

diagnostics and on-going assessments which vary in question format and are adaptively

tailored to meet learning needs and close identified learning gaps. Defining individual

student excellence is essential for expectations to be set and understood. Allowing

for students to frequently make interest-based learning choices consisting of multi-

option, tiered assignments and multiple formats of provided materials, such as

graphic and visual organizers, guided notes, and inquiry-based investigations in

my lessons daily is a best-practice of any teacher’s pedagogy if they are to

accomplish dramatic student growth for each and every one of their students.

For students who receive special education services, such as those with IEPs and

504 plans, I believe it is essential to spend a significant amount of time reviewing

and becoming familiar with each student’s legal accommodations and identifying

their strengths and weaknesses to provide the best instruction and support for each

student. I strongly believe that time is flexible and based on students' needs, and I

strive to facilitate student self-reliance early in the year through classroom routines and

procedures which establish the ability for students to track their individual progress toward

learning, unit, and year-long goals—an essential skill when preparing students to become lifelong learners.