Exemplary Teaching

Exemplary teaching is founded on the basis of being able to be open to suggestion, come up with creative learning plans, and connecting with students.

We can identify an exemplary teacher when we find a classroom environment where the students feel safe and connected to their teacher. Along with a complete understanding of the material.

Steps a teacher can take to be exemplary are:

• Monitor all students to make sure they are keeping up with the material.
• Get to know their students and their personal interests.
• Then using those interest to inspire learning in the classroom.
• Creating lesson plans that are inclusive and allow students to demonstrate learned knowledge.
• Taking advice or inspiration from websites, students, or other teachers.

To achieve exemplary status my classroom will have many posters to engage the students visually. Along with stations set up to provide experience of working a lab. Along with demonstrations to show the how certain chemicals react when paired together.

Exemplary status for science teachers are the ones who have their students excited to come to class. They create a learning environment where students feel safe to explore and fail without judgement. The teacher provides support and scaffolding so that students can not only regurgitate the material but use it practically to not only solve problems but also analyze why experiments or lessons end with the results the students achieve.

Exemplary science teachers devise their lesson plans around activities that pull in the attention and participation of their students. They also perform these activities in relation to the world around the students. For example:

• If the students live near the ocean in the northern region one might provide an experiment to see how cold the seawater needs to actually get until it freezes (since salt lowers the freezing temperature)
• They might take the students in a rural area out to a nearby field to test the make up of the soil for growing crops.
• Perhaps they organize an analysis of a nearby pond and have the students research on how to best clean it.

This is how teachers become exemplary, they not only teach students the material but show first hand how the material can be used to connect them with their community. The added teamwork teaches them practicality they will use later to navigate their careers.