Mason Orrei

Professor Suk
Education Field Experience EDUC 230-01
Spring 2017
Rationale Statement

Statement of Standard Ten: Leadership and Collaboration

The teacher seeks appropriate leadership roles and opportunities to take responsibility
for student learning, to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other school professionals,
and community members to ensure learner growth, and to advance the profession (Professional
Development in New Jersey, 2014, pg. 13).

Name of Artifact: Welcome Letter

Date of Artifact: January 2017

Course: Education Field Experience EDUC 230-01

Rationale Statement:

The artifact I worked on was the welcome letter. I had to simulate that I was writing a
letter to the parents/guardians of my students for the class that I would be teaching. Since I
would like to be an art teacher at a high school I wrote the letter for an Art 1 course. The letter
contains a small paragraph about what schools I went to and some of my interests. I talk about
what is expected of the course and how students will be graded. Finally I give materials that will
be needed for the course, and end the letter with a final sentence. The standard that goes with the
welcome letter is leadership and collaboration. This artifact relates to the performances section
10.i.4 which states the teacher works collaboratively with learnrs and their families to establish
mutual expectations and ongoing communication to support learner development and
achievement (Professional Development in New Jersey, 2014, pg. 13). Writing this welcome
letter creates a basic relationship with the students parents/guardians. It allows them insight
about what their child will take away from the course. In the letter I even talk about my interests
in order to give parents and idea of who I am. This letter is the first step to communication with a
parent/guardian and opens the door to other conversations.

Even though this is a mock letter, it still felt like I was writing one for my first class of
that school year. It gave me insight of what a part of my future will be. Wanting to be an art
teacher is enough to show that I think art is important. I was lucky enough to go to a high school
where art classes were in abundance. However, there are plenty of schools that think art is not
necessary. There are parents and guardians that do not think it is necessary. In the welcome letter,
 Orrei 2

I had to take that into account and put in real world applications as to why this class would be
important to take. The reasoning cannot simply be art is important and fun.

I believe that the welcome letter I wrote can be used as a template for the future classes I
teach. Of course, as I become more and more comfortable with teaching and the course, I will
edit and fix the letter as I go. I feel this letter is a very good starting point, and I am positive that
I will reference it in the future.

References

Professional Development in New Jersey. (2014, August 4). Retrieved from New Jersey State
Department of Education:
http://www.state.nj.us/education.profdev/profstand/teacherstandardscrosswalk.pdf