Teachers: Embracing the IB Learner Profile

MATC Synthesis Paper

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
Master of Arts Degree in Curriculum and Teaching
Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University
Amber N. Peruski
A42025603
June 17, 2015

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Introduction
At Washtenaw International High School, the praise that students receive may sound a

little different than student praise at other high schools. Here, student responses are encouraged
by phrases such as, Thank you for your willingness to be a risk-taker, I really appreciate how
open-minded your response was, and Your reflective attitude is greatly enhancing your
learning! All of these responses are inspired by the International Baccalaureate (IB) learner
profile, a list of characteristics aimed at developing inquiring, knowledgeable, and caring young
people who help to create a better and more peaceful world (International Baccalaureate
Organization, 2005).
Upon reflecting on my journey in the Master of Arts in Teaching and Curriculum
(MATC) degree program at Michigan State University and my experiences in my own
classroom, I have come to recognize that developing as an educator involves embracing the IB
learner profile characteristics in the work that I do. This paper will examine how my journey as
an educator has embraced the IB learner profile traits of being a risk-taker, a thinker,
knowledgeable, open-minded, reflective, and an inquirer in order to help me progress toward
becoming an accomplished educator and fulfilling the standards and goals outlined by the
MATC program as well as to help me achieve my individual goal that all of my students come to
a deep, personal understanding of science.
Risk-Taker: Implementing New Teaching Strategies
Before entering the MATC program in May 2013, I had a limited view of teaching.
When I thought of teaching, I thought of teachers lecturing and students taking notes. This view
came mainly from my prior school experience of application-based learning as the only method
of teaching and learning at the schools I attended. Participation in the MATC program

encouraged me to be a risk-taker and provided me with opportunities to try new teaching

strategies and expand my teaching repertoire in order to elicit students responses and best help
them master the science content.
At the beginning of my internship year in the fall of 2013, I held firmly to the belief that
application based lessons were the best way to help students come to a deep understanding of
science content. This belief was not based on research, but rather I held this belief because that
was how I thought I learned best. At that point in time, the idea of designing and implementing
inquiry-based lessons terrified me as I had no experience with lessons that allowed students to
study phenomena and construct their own knowledge. Due to this lack of experience, I did not
believe that students could draw their own conclusions that would lead them to accurate
understandings of the science content.
My belief that application based lessons were the best mode of instruction was deeply
rooted, and it was not until my engagement in TE 804 that this belief started to change. In TE
804, we were assigned to design and implement an inquiry-based lesson during our lead teach
period of our internship year in order to help us develop a wider teaching repertoire. It was after
this inquiry lesson on the flow of energy throughout an ecosystem that I saw how powerful
inquiry-based lessons could be in helping students come to a deep understanding of the material.
Being a risk-taker and teaching this inquiry lesson in the Spring of 2014 allowed me to delve into
my own beliefs about best teaching practices and helped me come to realize that students learn
best when the lesson is centered around their thoughts and ideas and when those thoughts and
ideas are being built upon in order to construct knowledge and understanding. My shift in views
of best teaching practices drastically impacted who I am as a teacher and has led me to start the
majority of my units in biology and chemistry with an inquiry-based design lab aimed at helping

students come to a deeper understanding of the content through the self-construction of

knowledge. I have included the inquiry activity sequence, four day lesson plans, and reflection
on student work written during my engagement in TE 804 as evidence of my progression toward
accomplished teaching, my willingness to be a risk-taker, my commitment to students capacity
to learn, my continued development of my teaching repertoire, and my inquiry into my own
beliefs about teaching.
Thinker: Analyzing Student Behavior and Taking Responsible Action
Throughout my yearlong internship I struggled to manage disruptive student behavior. In
order to meet the needs of my diverse student body, I embraced being a critical thinker and
analyzed disruptive student behavior through a variety of theoretical lenses in order to create a
positive, productive learning community. One manner in which I analyzed student behavior was
through a case study I conducted during TE 803. In this case study I analyzed the disruptive
behavior of a particular student, researched possible reasons for his disruptive behavior, prepared
and implemented an action plan based on research aimed at reducing the disruptive behavior, and
reflected on the outcome of my actions.
This experience helped me understand the importance of focusing on individual students
and their learning needs in order to help them be successful and come to a deeper understanding
of science. It also helped me create a more productive classroom culture where students were
able to work in a focused manner as I was better prepared to plan activities that prevented
disruptive behavior as well as better able to respond to the disruptive behavior when it occurred.
After performing this case study, I began to think much more critically about why students
exhibit the behaviors that they do in class and how I can tailor lessons in order to best meet their
individual learning needs. Reflection on this case study helped me create my current classroom

management plan and continues to influence the lessons I design as I more proactively take into
account the needs of my diverse student body. I have included this case study as it demonstrates
my belief and priority in focusing on students individual and diverse needs and my
reflectiveness in planning based on students individual needs.
Knowledgeable: Exploring and Applying Knowledge to Ensure Student Success
Before I entered the MATC program, I had never heard of the framework of backward
design. In TE 891, the first course I took as a participant in the MATC program as a member of
the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Program, I was introduced to the concept of backward design.
In this course, I was able to explore how teachers determine what they want their students to
know and be able to do based on state and national standards and how they design lessons that
help students master the outlined objectives. As I entered my internship year, we were tasked
with using backward design methods to plan entire units. I had to apply the framework to
construct a multi-week unit that built upon students prior knowledge and integrated student
interests. The planning required critical reflection as I had to decide what I wanted students to
know and be able to do and I had to anticipate what students would learn from each activity and
how I could best help a diverse set of students master the learning goal. I included a unit plan
written in TE 804 as evidence of my growth and progression towards accomplished teaching as it
demonstrates my understanding of how to design curriculum, instruction, and assessment around
big ideas and students interests in order to foster student understanding.
Not only is it enough to have knowledge of how to properly plan lessons in order to help
students master content, one also has to have knowledge about the resources available that can be
used throughout a unit or lesson in order to foster deep understanding. My participation in the
MATC program has exposed me to a variety of teaching resources and has taught me how to best

use those resources to ensure student learning. TE 843 focused on using text as an educational
resource and helped change my view of text being a static resource to a view that text can be a
dynamic resource if used in the right way. I learned that part of using text in the proper manner
involves making sure that the text is accessible to all students. Thus, in order to analyze the
accessibility of the textbooks I used during my internship year and am currently using this year
in my biology class, I conducted a content area reading inventory to determine the reading level
of the text. This experience taught me how to analyze text in order to determine if the text is
accessible to my students and has given me the knowledge to be able to choose articles that are
developmentally appropriate for my students. I included the content area reading inventory as
evidence of my progression toward accomplished teaching as it demonstrates my ability to
evaluate and use information to improve my practice and help students come to a deep
understanding of science content.
Open-Minded: Accepting New Views on Teaching
Teaching is an ever-advancing profession. The ideas and conceptual frameworks in place
in education at any given time are likely to change and evolve in light of new evidence in order
to ensure that students are receiving the best education possible. Therefore, in order to provide
students with the best opportunities to learn, one must be open-minded and accepting of new
views on teaching. Participation in the MATC program has allowed me to analyze changes in
teaching and what those mean for myself as a teacher and the implications for student learning as
Michigan considers transitioning from the Michigan High School Content Expectations for
science education to the Next Generation Science Standards.
In TE 861, I had the opportunity to look at teaching through the lenses of the Michigan
High School Content Expectations for science education as well as the Next Generation Science

Standards and critically inquire as to how transitioning from the Michigan High School Content
Expectations for science education to the Next Generation Science Standards would impact the
teaching I do in my classroom and the effects that this change would have on student learning.
As a result of the analysis, I learned that in order to create scientifically literate citizens who
appreciate the role of science in everyday life, are able to apply their scientific knowledge to
solve problems, and possess the skills necessary for college and future careers, I need to embrace
the new views on teaching and begin to incorporate core disciplinary ideas, crosscutting
concepts, and scientific practices into all of my lessons.
This opportunity was a turning point in my teaching and helped me move from focusing
primarily on scientific facts in my lessons to incorporating scientific practices and skills in my
lessons. Before learning about the teaching pedagogy outlined in the Framework for K-12
Science Education, my main goal in my lessons was to teach my students scientific facts. Today,
however, I incorporate core disciplinary ideas, crosscutting concepts, and scientific practices into
my classroom in order to promote teaching for science understanding. I organize activities that
focus on the core disciplinary ideas to provide my students with the scientific knowledge they
need in order to make decisions in their everyday lives. I explicitly teach the crosscutting
concepts in order to help my students see the connections between various concepts, and I
incorporating the scientific practices into my lessons to help my students develop the skills that
they need in order to be able to use the scientific knowledge that they learned in class and apply
it to solve problems in their communities and in the world.
I included the analysis of the Framework for K-12 Science Education as evidence of my
progression toward accomplished teaching as it demonstrates my ability to apply different
theoretical perspectives to enhance my teaching, to critically inquire into my own practices in

order to plan lessons that promote understanding science, and to evaluate and use information to
improve my practice and help students come to a deep understanding of science content.
Reflective: Fostering Professional Growth Through Self-Introspection
Continued improvement and refinement of my teaching practices is one of my top
priorities in order to ensure that all students have the opportunity to learn in meaningful ways.
The MATC program has provided me with the skills that I need to continually learn and grow as
an educator through the value and emphasis it places on reflection. I seek to grow as an educator
by continuously reflecting on my teaching practices and my students understanding in order to
ensure that I am meeting the needs of all of my students and helping all of my students come to a
deep understanding of course material.
At the beginning of my internship year I had difficulty encouraging students to complete
and turn in assignments. As this was a major problem of practice, I took time to reflect upon
why students may not be completing their work during my engagement in TE 802. I included
this reflection as evidence of progression towards accomplished teaching as it demonstrates my
ability to reflect on my own practices and the necessity to relate content to students prior
knowledge and their interests. Critically reflecting on why students were not completing their
work through theoretical lenses allowed me to discover the importance of creating assignments
that the students find meaningful and engaging. This reflection impacted my teaching as it
caused me to change the type of assignments I give my students. Previous to this reflection, I
gave a lot of assignments that promoted lower level thinking and were meaningless to the
students lives. After taking time to reflect on the low completion rates of assignments and
learning that students tended to complete assignments when they saw value in them, I began to
assign tasks that promoted higher order thinking skills and allowed them to apply the knowledge

that we had been learning about in class to their lives. This has increased the completion rates of
assignments and has increased my students understanding of course material as they are actively
engaged in thinking about how the science content can be applied to solve novel problems.
Furthermore, in order to improve my teaching and help my students come to a deep
understanding of science, I analyze and reflect on the formative assessment tasks that I give my
students on a regular basis. As evidence of progression towards accomplished teaching, I
analyze student responses and use the information I learn from those responses to guide and alter
my teaching. In TE 861 I had the opportunity to reflect on students responses to multiple
formative assessment tasks. This opportunity helped me grow as an educator by allowing me to
see how I could use what students understood and what students were still confused about to
tailor my instruction and provide them with feedback that would help increase their
understanding of the science content. It also improved my teaching by allowing me to see how I
could alter my formative assessment tasks to gain an even deeper insight into what my students
know. I have included my analysis of formative assessment as evidence of my growth and
progress towards accomplished teaching as it demonstrates my commitment to reflection and the
diverse needs of students and shows my ability to design assessment and critically analyze and
alter my practice in order to enhance student learning.
Inquirer: Seeking New Opportunities to Learn
Just as reflection has been an integral part of helping me progress toward accomplished
teaching, collaboration with colleagues and professional development opportunities have also
provided me with opportunities to learn and grow as an educator. Throughout my internship
year, I took part in monthly professional learning communities with my classmates in TE 802
and TE 804. This provided me with an opportunity to discuss problems of practice and solutions

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to these problems in a collaborative nature. This was a great source of learning and insight as I
was able to hear a number of different perspectives as to how to approach the issue and engage in
critical discussion of best practice. I have included reports written based on the professional
learning communities that I participated in as evidence of my collaborative problem solving and
progression toward accomplished teaching.
As a beginning teacher, I have also participated in a number of professional development
activities outside of the classroom in order to improve my practice. As a member of the
Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship program, I attend monthly professional development
seminars at Michigan State University that provide me with detailed information about
classroom management, differentiated instruction, questioning, and formative assessment. These
professional development opportunities are great changes to form professional networks and to
collaborate with other teachers in order to enhance our collective understanding of how to
improve our teaching. In addition to monthly professional development seminars at Michigan
State University, I also took advantage of an opportunity to attend a 20-hour conference in
Columbus, Ohio entitled, Managing Assessment in the Sciences. This conference allowed me to
learn more about how to use standards based grading in a science classroom and has transformed
how I will be assessing students in the future. Next year, I am planning on transitioning from a
traditional grading policy to a standards based grading policy based on four criteria: knowing and
understanding, inquiring and designing, processing and evaluating, and reflecting on the impacts
of science. As evidence, I have included certificates of participation for these professional
development opportunities.

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Conclusion
As part of the MATC, I have grown as an educator and progressed towards mastery of

the programs goals. This evidence is demonstrated through the various artifacts presented as
well as this synthesis paper. As I continue in my teaching career, I will continue to be a risktaker, a thinker, knowledgeable, open-minded, reflective, and an inquirer in order to continue to
improve my teaching and help all of my students come to a deep and meaningful understanding
of science.

Works Cited
International Baccalaureate Organization. (2005). Mission. Retrieved from
http://www.ibo.org/en/about-the-ib/mission/
Michigan State University. MATC Program Goals and Standards. Retrieved from
https://matcadvisor.wordpress.com/3-matc-program-goals-and-standards/