Throughout the process of gathering all of the materials for this portfolio, I learned a lot

about myself: what I know, what I want to know, and my teaching style. I have learned that as an

educator, I have a very laid back teaching style. I would rather have my students reading texts

that they choose and actually enjoying themselves than having them read a class text. However, I

do understand how important class texts are, and I have a few young adult literature texts that I

would like all of my students to read at some point. This is one of the artifacts that I am most

comfortable implementing at this point in my preservice teaching career—young adult literature

books, in addition to the classic literature that is typically taught. Teaching our students that there

are diverse characters in books, just like in real life, is extremely important. Reading books about

tragedies helps build empathy in our students. I chose two different books for artifacts about very

different characters: ​Al Capone Does My Shirts​ and ​Orbiting Jupiter.​ I would be very open to

having students read these two books and having a discussion about the characters, and how the

characters in the two books differ from the books that are traditionally taught in schools.

Diversity is key—and I feel comfortable teaching my students using diverse texts as an inclusive

practice.

An inclusive practice that I would not quite feel comfortable using in my classroom yet is

supporting, or forming, a GSTA. Of course I would support these students in my classroom, but

until I have my feet under me and am comfortable in a school district, I would not feel

comfortable creating or advising a new club in a school. I need to grow as an educator one step at

a time, and until I have time to spare, I would not want to take on any extra responsibilities. This

does not mean that I would not support LGBT students in my classroom, because I would, but I

would not want to support an entire club until I was familiar with the school myself.
 I tried to choose an array of different artifacts for my inclusive practices, however, I did

end up with three different books. This is simply because I am going to be in an English

classroom, and I did not feel as if a book list would suffice—instead, I wanted each book to stand

out on its own, since they are individually important. Other than that, I tried to think of different

groups of students and how to best support them. Throughout the semester, I came across things

in daily life and a lightbulb went off as to how to use it in my classroom. Some of the other

artifacts came things I came across in my other classes, but many of them I found specifically

because I was looking for them. I wanted to be able to cater to many different groups of students,

and I wanted to find artifacts that would encompass ideals for universal design, instead of just for

accommodations and modifications. I truly believe that each of the artifacts that I have chosen is

unique in its own way, and will help me in the classroom. I am hoping that these artifacts will

help me include universal design in my lesson planning, so that all students can be helped in the

process. I believe that an inclusive environment is best, and this portfolio has helped me gather

artifacts that will help me create an inclusive environment in my future classroom.