The candidate understands how learners grow and develop, recognizing that

patterns of learning and development vary individually within and across the
cognitive linguistic, social, emotional, and physical areas, and designs and
implements developmentally appropriate, relevant, and rigorous learning
experiences.

Since I stayed at the same school district during the entire duration of my student
teaching, I was able to see many of the students from the beginning of the semester to the
end, and watch their progression as a musician. The school system I am teaching in is not
ethnically diverse, and there are not many students who have special needs. Most of the
students come from a similar background, and have similar cultures. However, during my
teaching, I found that every student I came in contact with learned differently from their
peers. It was important that I created lesson plans that would be in each of my students
zone of proximal development, by using multiple modalities in my classroom. For example,
I have artifacts for this entry based off of one of my focus students who was in my 2nd
grade class in which I taught a unit plan. I had to incorporate lots of physical activities into
my unit in order to engage the student and alleviate classroom disruptions caused by his
behaviors when off-task. Similarly, in my 8th grade ensemble, I allowed a student who was
not being challenged by the music to beatbox and work on developing more technical vocal
percussion skills. I have included a recording of the 8th grade singing this song as an
artifact. I recognized during my teaching that you cannot plan an effective lesson without
knowing your students first. It is also important that you incorporate learning methods into
your teaching that suit each student, and not just what suits you as a learner. One way of
doing this is inviting the students to tell you some of their favorite things to do in music. I
asked this on the first day and got responses about visual, aural and kinesthetic activities,
which showed me that I have many different learners in my classroom. This method of
teaching should extend all the way into the ensemble level, and I incorporate many of these
modalities in my secondary teaching as well, such as audio recording analysis and using the
body to depict musicality and phrasing. Knowing the students is key in every aspect of
teaching, but also extremely important in preparing authentic lessons for the students and
providing them the tools to succeed in their musicianship.