Prior to the Masters of Arts in Teaching program, my teaching philosophy  was rooted in individualism. I focused on the discovery of identity through students’ independent experiences. That is how I was as a  student, independent, and protective of my work. My development over the past two years has shown me how integral community is to fostering identity. My masters program and my first year teaching has been an ongoing process of learning alongside peers, professors, and professional educators.  I realized I can only grow when I engage in discussion, feedback, and collaboration. I would not be the educator I am today if I did not join the professional education community earnestly.

            In my last student teaching placement at New Technology High School, I co-taught in one classroom with two educators and another intern. The four of us shared a vision for our learners, and offered support and feedback in pursuit of that vision. Every day we reflected with ourselves and each other. My understandings were affirmed, challenged and eventually improved because I chose to step into that space as a collaborator. This collaborative spirit has carried over to my current job, as I have jumped in as a new professional learning community member with my eighth grade team.  

            I create a culture of collaborative learning in my classroom. Lev Vygotsky, an educational theorist, asserts that knowledge is constructed through social interaction, and through that social interaction individuals create meaning. This is vital to reading and writing. Students construct knowledge together from difficult texts such as Romeo and Juliet or The Hate You Give. The texts assigned in schools are assigned with intention. They offer insights to our society and our inner selves. Their themes are not themes one can discover without discussing their relevance, their tenderness, and their weight with others. Texts come alive when reading becomes a shared experience.

            Even though writing is often an individual experience, writing improves when there is a space where writers can share, receive feedback and celebrate their work as a collective. I taught two creative writing courses in my placement at New Tech and have brought various elements of it into my teaching now. When I introduced our poetry unit, my learners all groaned. I was determined to make it a collaborative experience. We read poetry aloud, savored our favorite lines, and set out to write our own. We wrote class poems, we wrote our own poems alongside each other, and shared them.  Eventually they asked me to extend the poetry unit. Our classroom transformed into a place of writing exploration. We became a writer community.

            I did not find my educator identity by sitting in a room by myself creating lesson plans. I found it through my shared experiences within the professional education community. When students participate in communities of learning, they use those experiences to reflect and develop their own identity. That is how learners become stark, diverse individuals who are also loving and engaged community members wherever they decide to grow outside of secondary education.