Educational Professionalism

Cody Meyers

Saint Marys University of Minnesota

Schools of Graduate and Professional Programs

Portfolio Entry for Wisconsin Teacher Standard 10

EDUW 696 Professional Skills Development

James Sauter, Instructor

February 17, 2017

I. Wisconsin Teacher Standard #

10

Professionalism

Teachers are connected to other teachers and the community. The teacher fosters
relationships with school colleagues, parents, and agencies in the larger community to
support students learning and well-being.
 II. Professional Development
Goals
National Board Core Proposition #5: Teachers are members of learning communities.

Wisconsin Teacher Standard #10: Select goals from knowledge, skills, and dispositions.

Danielson Domain 4: Professional Responsibilities

Goal 1: I will provide professional development to guide staff toward

expanding their abilities to improve learning for English Language Learner
(ELL) students.

Goal 2: I will understand how students home-life impacts their learning

and make the proper adjustments to maintain high performance.

Goal 3: I will collaborate with colleagues in order to create a positive and

effective learning environment for students and teachers alike.

Goal 4: I will involve parents and guardians in their childrens educational

experience through building strong and productive relationships, thus
improving overall student learning and welfare.
 III. Professional Background
Overview
Over the past eight years, I have been extremely involved in the

education field. My experiences working as an educator and my impact on

student learning have both stretched far beyond the walls of the

classroom. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, I

began my teaching career in Costa Rica. While abroad, I learned the

fundamentals of teaching English as Second Language (ESL) and what it is

like to work with students ranging from pre-school through adulthood.

Upon returning to the United States, I began working toward my Wisconsin

teaching licensure in ESL and Spanish. I accomplished this goal while

working in Colby, Wisconsin as an English Language Learner program

coordinator.

My position in Colby provided me with a unique opportunity to work

with students, staff, and administration within the entire school district.

Not only did this opportunity allow me to improve in my teaching craft, but

it also allowed me to learn the importance of developing strong

relationships with students and colleagues. Ultimately, this position

provided many opportunities to develop leadership qualities and become

more involved within the district.

While in Colby, I volunteered to serve on the districts strategic

planning committee where I contributed in the development of the

districts long-term vision and goals. I also served on the districts

leadership committee where I strongly advocated for the English

Language Learner (ELL) students and their families. My wide presence in

classrooms throughout the district provided me with the opportunity to

carry out several professional development opportunities. In fact, I taught

a Saint Marys University class on strategies for academic language

learners for my district colleagues under the supervision of my district

administrator.

As a Colby employee, I also attended several trainings to improve

my own practice as an educator. Most notably, I attended a training on

Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP), where fellow colleagues

and I learned about how to better serve language learners. In addition to

my own education, I strived to assist the Spanish-speaking families and

community members of Colby through providing evening English classes

throughout the school year. I also strived to encourage parent

involvement throughout my years in Colby by scheduling parent-teacher

conferences and ensuring the provision of interpretation services for over

100 students. Finally, I served students and community through coaching

where I was able to positively impact the lives of Colby High School

students.

While Colby provided me with an abundance of opportunities to

grow as a professional, I decided to expand my horizons and take a

position as a middle school ESL teacher in the growing Holmen School

District. While Holmen presented new challenges, I continued to strive

toward providing a first-class service to my students, their families, my

colleagues, and community. I have continued to be actively involved in

several committees and have taken leadership roles by delivering

professional development opportunities. In addition to supporting my

colleagues professional growth, I have also continued to take advantage

of conference opportunities to improve upon my own practice.

Additionally, I have challenged myself to continue expanding upon my

teaching abilities through earning my Masters degree.

Through procuring funds through a community grant, I was able to

start a community soccer league that runs over the summer months.

Finally, I have continued to make an impact on students outside the

classroom through coaching both volleyball and gymnastics at the middle

school. In addition to coaching, I make the extra effort to attend school

activities such as plays and sporting events to support my students as

they pursue their extracurricular passions. Overall, I enjoy my life and

impact as a teacher, and I look forward to growing professionally over the

course of my career.
 IV. Portfolio Pages
Example 1: Family and Community:

Throughout my career as an educator, I have been a strong

advocate for my students and families. From working with staff to ensure

accommodations are met to meet learner needs to scheduling

conferences non-English speaking families, I have consistently strived to

provide my students and their families with an equal footing in education.

My most recent demonstration of advocacy for my students and families

occurred this past semester. In September, the City of La Crosse informed

the local organizers of Hmong New Year that they would not be able to

hold the celebration at the public fairgrounds, essentially canceling the

event. This was disappointing for many of my Hmong students and their

families. In response, my principal, a few other staff members, and I met

to discuss possibilities to put on a celebration in the middle school in

recognition of the Hmong culture. We ultimately decided to put on an all-

school assembly that would highlight traditional Hmong dances, music,

and instruments, as well as a red-carpet fashion show to allow students to

model their traditional clothing.

As we continued to plan, we determined that the assembly would be

more impactful for students and staff if they were provided with

background knowledge on the Hmong culture. I volunteered to take on

this extra task through the creation of a student-produced introductory

video. I thought this would be great tool to educate our building

population on where the Hmong people originated, how they supported

the US during the Vietnam War, and how they struggled to find peace

after the war. This is where I began to step up my effort to reach out to

students and families. Working with over 30 middle school Hmong

students, we developed guiding questions and began to research. While

students completed part of this research on the internet, I also directed

them to speak with their parents and grandparents, many of whom were

directly impacted by the war. Eventually, the students combined the

research, and organized it into various sections to highlight the important

aspects of Hmong history. Following this, the students developed a script

and guiding storyboard in order to produce a video. While this occurred,

students found Hmong music and learned how to use google image

searches to incorporate visuals into the video.

In addition to providing information, Hmong parents and community

members were able to provide feedback on the video to ensure that the

events were portrayed accurately and with an appropriate level of

sensitivity before its presentation. Prior to the all-school assembly, the

Hmong history video was shown in all classrooms, which built background

on the Hmong culture for our students and staff. Additionally, parents and

community members were instrumental in helping their children acquire

and learn about the meaning behind their traditional garments, which was

shared during the assembly.

Ultimately, the platform I helped to create allowed for teamwork to

flourish between the Hmong students and parents, which led to the

creation of a powerful video and the roll-out of an amazing assembly

(Artifact A). Not only did these events improve cross-cultural

understanding, but they were also empowering for the Hmong students

who further developed, and to demonstrated their expertise on their own

cultural history. It was amazing to see the confident look on the faces of

the students and the pride they exhibited as they performed dances and

modeled their clothing in front of over 900 staff, students, and community

members!

Personally, I feel like I learned a great deal about the culture of my

Hmong students, which has helped me better relate to them. By

understanding the struggles faced by the Hmong during the war, I have a

greater appreciation for the sacrifices they have made to come to the

United States. Additionally, this knowledge will also help me to feel more

confident when cultural misunderstandings occur between students. This

experience also reminded me of the importance to provide students with

empowering opportunities. Many of the students have shown greater

levels of confidence ever since the event! Finally, this process helped me

better understand how to use a green-screen to produce videos, which

is a skill I will be using in the future with students to create more

meaningful projects.

Example 2: Professional Learner

After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in 2009,

I headed for Costa Rica where I began working as a teacher of English as a

Foreign Language. While teaching abroad, I discovered my passion for

educating children and eventually decided to return to the United States

to acquire my Wisconsin teaching license. Having acquired my state

certification, my first teaching position was in Colby, Wisconsin where I

directed the districts ELL program. While this teaching position was

significantly different than the one I had in Costa Rica, I felt right at home

as my Spanish-speaking skills were in extremely high demand. Having a

strong familiarity with the Spanish language and Latino culture, I quickly

transitioned into my new role. However, when I decided to take a position

in Holmen, WI, I was entering an unfamiliar teaching context. Having very

limited experience working with the Hmong population, I was not quite

sure how to relate to my students. After a few weeks with my new

students, I felt like I needed to learn and develop new skills to provide

more meaningful instruction.

As I began to formulate a plan to improve my instructional approach,

I encountered information regarding a culturally-responsive teaching

conference at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (Artifact B).

Considering the potential benefits of such an opportunity, I decided to

attend the weekend conference and learned from some amazing leaders

in education. One notable speaker was Dr. Sharroky Hollie, who introduced

the audience to the concept of culturally-responsive teaching and

learning. Hollie highlighted the core principles behind cultural-

responsiveness and provided several activities to help educators integrate

them into their classrooms. This experience served as a launch pad for my

teaching career and provided me with critical skills to improve my

performance at Holmen Middle School. While I immediately began

implementing Hollies strategies in my own classroom, the topic of

cultural-responsiveness has continued to inspire me as an educator. I

have continued to research ways to better relate to my students and to

provide even more engaging and authentic learning opportunities.

As a direct result of time spent researching outside of school, I have

clearly raised my teaching performance to a higher level. I have

significantly upgraded my instructional abilities by adopting the core

principles of culturally-responsive teaching. This has led to greater levels

of engagement in class as student participation and work quality have

increased dramatically. Additionally, I have found that my relationship with

students seems to be stronger. Being aware of the link between culture

and behavior, I am now able to observe and analyze situations through a

multicultural lens. This lens has allowed me to better identify hidden

messages and avoid cultural misunderstandings when dealing with

behavior issues. Finally, my research and implementation of the strategies

have equipped me to become actively engaged in building-level

conversations to promote awareness of culturally-responsive practices and

their positive impact on student learning.

Example 3: Leader and Collaborator

At Holmen Middle School, about 30 of our 900 students are ELL

students. While this equates to a very small percentage, the number of

language learners has followed an upward trend. Thus, teachers are

beginning to experience new challenges as many have limited experience

working with ELLs. The increasing number of language learners in our

student population has brought about many questions regarding linguistic

abilities, expectations, and how to support language development. To

address these concerns, the 6th grade ELL teacher, the Pupil Services
coordinator, and I met to develop a plan to provide a professional

development opportunity for the middle school staff. Together, we

identified the critical areas to be addressed, researched them, and created

a comprehensive presentation to provide staff with background

information on ELL students, their needs, and strategies to support

content acquisition and language growth (Artifact C).

My research, combined with an extensive background working with

ELL students, added tremendous value to the presentation. When

discussing universal strategies to support ELLs, I provided staff with

examples of my own implementation of each strategy so that they could

see how each was put into practice. I feel like the presentation was

successful in impacting student learning as I witnessed one of my science

co-teachers using the Total Physical Response (TPR) strategy in one of his

lessons on the regions of the brain. As the instructor would say the brain

areas, both he and students would touch that area on their heads.

Eventually, he would say the vocabulary word and the students would

touch the corresponding region on their own head. Later, he touched the

regions on his own head while the students had to chorally shout out the

brain region term. Both ELL and non-ELL students appeared to be very

engaged in the activity. The application of this vocabulary learning

strategy allowed students to experience vocabulary acquisition through a

kinesthetic learning approach. In this scenario, participation increased as

students of various language levels practiced the academic words in a less

language-demanding format.
 Reflecting on this collaborative endeavor, I think the presentation

was an effective way to begin having conversations regarding the needs

of ELL students. Additionally, this activity established a common ground

where I could share with teachers that I do not have an opportunity to

work with directly. Presenting in front of the entire staff also demonstrated

that I was confident in both my instructional abilities and knowledge about

language acquisition, which was extremely important when developing

trust with colleagues. By earning trust and having these initial

conversations with staff, I strengthened relationships with staff across

subjects and grade levels, which helped foster further communication on

best practice. Finally, this experience reminded me of my passion for

discussing language acquisition principles and helping others apply these

concepts in their classrooms. Eventually, I would like to take on a bigger

role in providing professional development opportunities or pursue a post-

secondary education career in teacher preparation.

 V. Reflective Summary
Reflecting upon my experiences thus far in my teaching career,

there are several patterns that begin to emerge. One major pattern to

highlight is my strong stance on learning for all. I truly believe that all

students can succeed, albeit at different levels. This was evidenced in my

pursuit to provide students and families with equal inclusion and access to

educational opportunities. While I believe that all students are capable of

learning, I am just as confident in my colleagues as learners. In addition to

building trust and relationships with staff, I have placed a great amount of

effort into offering ideas and strategies for them to expand upon their

instructional practices. On the other hand, while I have many language

building strategies to share, I have also learned a great deal about how to

teach through working with other educators. Through conversations and

the sharing of strategies, the opportunity to work with other teachers has

been mutually beneficial from a personal learning standpoint.

While learning takes center stage, another pattern that has emerged

deals with an increased ability to integrate collaboration into the teaching

and learning process. Through my work with culturally-responsiveness, I

have developed many more tools and activities to increase learner

collaboration during instruction. In this model, students have been able to

take on greater teaching roles as they work together to solve problems,

whereas I have become more of a facilitator of learning. In addition to my

students, I have also developed stronger collaborative skills through

working with colleagues. I have become more involved with my co-

teachers to identify learning outcomes, plan lessons and integrate

teaching strategies in order to achieve common objectives. Whether

working with students or teachers, collaboration has become critical to our

success.

The final pattern that begins to emerge in my reflection deals with

the increased usage of technology. Since embarking on our 1:1

Chromebook initiative, Holmen Middle School staff and students have

relied increasingly on technology to facilitate communication and to

create interactive and engaging learning experiences. For instance, my

knowledge regarding Gmail has helped me to reach a greater number of

staff, students, and families. It has also helped me maintain a system to

keep critical information organized so it may be quickly and easily

accessed when needed. My solid background using google documents has

allowed me to create and share learning tools and activities with staff and

students with the click of a button. Additionally, I have explored and

implemented learning activities through a variety of engaging

applications, which have positively impacted student learning both in and

outside of the classroom.

The most effective aspect of my teaching, regarding student

performance, is my drive to ensure that all students are successful. There

will always be a wide array of needs in every classroom, and I enjoy the

challenge to discover new ways to help struggling students bridge the

gaps. My passion to ensure every student learns has propelled me to

attend weekend conferences and take on this very graduate program. It

drives me to learn new strategies to improve my teaching performance so

that I am equipped to make a bigger difference in the classroom. Finally,

my desire to see all students succeed motivates me to step outside of my

comfort zone. I am willing to take on challenges such as organizing

assemblies that empower students or working with staff to provide

professional development opportunities. Ultimately, my focus on learning

for all students drives everything I do as an educator.

Currently, I would like to continue developing my abilities as a

professional educator. Looking into the future, my goal will be to become

National Board certified. Between my years of experience and this

accreditation, I feel like my next step will be to pursue a position of

greater leadership. I would like to earn an administrators license to

become a program director or principal where I could take the lessons

learned throughout my career as a teacher to promote a culture of

learning where the goal is for all learners to be successful. In the distant

future, I would like to take the knowledge gained through teaching and

working as an administrator to pursue post-secondary opportunities

preparing future teachers for a career in education.

VI. Professional Documents
 CODY C. MEYERS
ccmeye11@smumn.edu
____________________________________________________________________

EDUCATION:
University-Wisconsin Eau Claire (Graduated-May 2009)
Bachelor of Arts
Major: Latin American Studies, Minor: Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Cumulative GPA- 3.86
Honors:
2009 National Conference for Undergraduate Research Presenter
2009 UWEC Alumni Association Outstanding Student Award Recipient
2008 UWEC Latin American Studies Scholarship Award Recipient

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
School District of Holmen 8/2015 to present
Middle School ESL Teacher Holmen, WI, USA
Co-taught in 7th-8th grade core classes (Science, Math, ELA)
Taught ESL Writing course
Actively involved in building RtI Tier II committee projects

Colby School District 8/2011 to 6/2015

English Language Learner Program Coordinator Colby, WI, USA
Taught ELL classes and provided professional development for 4K-12 staff
Directed support provided by ELL Paraprofessionals district-wide
Scheduled and administered district-wide ACCESS for ELLs assessment

Centro de Atencin Integral Nios y Nias Triunfadores 9/2009 to 12/2010

Special-Education English Teacher Costa Rica
Taught English to grades K-9
Designed and implemented English language curriculum
Adapted course content and activities to disabled-learner context

VOLUNTEER WORK:
Ministry Saint Josephs Hospital 9/2012 to present
5-North Nursing Unit Volunteer Marshfield, WI, USA
Restocked nurse carts with essential supplies
Ensured necessary equipment was present in all patient rooms
Communicated urgent patient needs to staff

PUBLICATIONS:
Meyers, Cody. (2012). Welcome to Facebook.
In Bruce Taylor & Patti See (Eds.), Higher Learning: Reading and Writing about
College 3rd Edition (pp.140-147). New York: Pearson.

Meyers, Cody. (2009). Economic and Societal Impact of Hispanic Immigrants Living in Rural
South Dakota. Proceedings of the National Conference on Undergraduate Research
(NCUR) 2009, 1040-1047.
 VII. Artifacts
Artifact A

The artifact consists of an image that was taken by the La Crosse Tribune during the Holmen
Middle School Hmong culture celebration. The celebration consisted of Hmong music,
dance, and a red-carpet showcasing of Hmong traditional clothing. The full article is located
on my WTS 10 web page along with the student-produced Hmong history video.

Artifact B

This artifact is comprised of the teaching certificate awarded after completing the weekend
conference on culturally-responsive teaching. In addition to the certificate, the WTS 10 web
page provides a video link to one of Dr. Hollies strategies being taught in action while I was
working in Costa Rica this past summer. The video demonstrates the musical shares
strategy in which music and dance, significant cultural components, are incorporated into a
learning activity.
Artifact C

This artifact includes the title page of the presentation that was developed collaboratively
between the 6th grade ELL teacher, the Pupil Services coordinator and me. It was used to
provide professional development to the entire Holmen Middle School teaching staff. The
entire presentation PDF is located on the WTS 10 web page.