Dhagat 1

Sandeep Dhagat
Professor Suk
EDUC 230-01 Education Field Experience
Fall 2017
Rationale Statement-Standard #10

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. (NJ Professional
Standards for Teachers, 2014, p. 13).

Artifact: Teagle Essay

Date of Completion: October 19th, 2016 (Fall 2016)
Course Completed in: EDUC-212 Foundations of Education

Rationale Statement:
The Teagle Scholars Project represents the end-product of the EDUC-212 service learning
requirement, and the synthesis of accumulated observation notes from our placement classroom.
Tasked with considering an issue of social equality at my placement school a K-8 Catholic parochial
school I reflected on the status and behaviors of non-Catholic students in an essay. Along with another
student, we presented our findings and observations about the school in an informative power point.
The Teagle essay evidences my understanding of schools as organizations within a historical, cultural,
political, and social context and my thinking on how to work with others across the system to support
learners (NJ Professional Standards for Teachers 10.ii.2, 2014, p. 14). A large portion of the essay is
dedicated to understanding how parochial schools function within American history and how they
epitomize the Constitutions protection of freedom of religion. However, because of my own
background and lack of formal understanding of private religious schools, the makeup of the schools
demographics challenged my biases and assumptions. This led me to research and try to understand
how prevalent the situation of non-Catholic students attending Catholic schools is. In addition, I
considered ways how religious schools in general can accommodate students who profess a different
religious faith than the one represented by the school.
Religious schools have a unique historical, cultural, political, and social context within which
they exist. However, students who profess a different faith than the private school they attend may be
affected by the same historical, cultural, political, and social narratives. In fact, it may create
(unconscious) pressure for students to assimilate into the dominant religious group, or to at least adopt
similar behaviors during school-hours. While writing this essay, I actively considered my own childhood
education, where I was often the only Hindu in my class until I entered middle school. Even though I was
in a public school, which is explicitly non-denominational, there are still influences (such as the racial
and religious makeup of the school) that have an impact on minority students that are not always
positive to their identity. My experiences the parochial school were relevant, even if the setting was not
a public school, because the issue itself affects many schools where the population is relatively
homogeneous. Before writing the essay, I shared my thoughts with a few Asian-American friends who
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initially went to schools outside of New Jersey, and they expressed similar stories of how difficult it was
being the only non-Christian in a classroom because they did not always have the vocabulary or ability
to explain to others the differences in their religions without feeling like an outsider.
As a professional teacher, I imagine using this artifact to evidence why educators should take
the time to actively learn more about their students culture, family, religion, and background. Not only
does it help to build a working relationship between student and learner, but it helps to create a
learning environment that encourages an appreciation for differences between students in a variety of
demographic factors. Also, this essay would be a personal reminder to continuously evaluate the
historical, cultural, political, and social environment of a school or classroom in order to create the best
conditions to foster learning.

Reference

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