Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my Learner Analysis blog!

My name is Katie Cordray. I am currently pursuing my Elementary Teaching Licensure at the University of Colorado Denver with a Masters in Education and Human Development. I am in my second semester of the UCTE program and have just started my second internship at Laredo Elementary School in Aurora, Colorado. I currently have the opportunity to work with second grade students there on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 7:30 am - 4:00 pm.

Digital Story

View my digital story HERE!

Remaining Questions

• What questions remain about this student as a learner?

  At this time, I do not have any other questions about Ben as a learner. I am happy that he has been accepted into a program for middle school that will better fit his needs and wish him all the best!

• What questions do you have about how to serve this student’s needs effectively?

  I am curious to learn more about balancing the needs of one student effectively with the needs of the entire classroom. Some methods in which his family/teachers came up with supporting his behaviors in school involved a lot of one-on-one positive attention that would not have been possible without me in the classroom as a student teacher. I am interested in other ways to give that positive attention/feedback while also giving attention to all of the other students in the room.

Final Thoughts

• What did you learn about the multiple dimensions of students as learners as a result of this project?

  A student is impacted by many things as a learner when coming into the classroom. It is important to keep in mind that every student is different, and some students may have different needs than others. For example, it is extremely helpful to give directions both written and orally. A student's anxieties may impact their ability to learn in your classroom, and creating an environment that can minimize those anxieties is vital. It is also extremely important to consider what each student is dealing with outside of the classroom and how that may be impacting their performance in school. The most important thing to do as a teacher is to form a strong relationship with your students so that they feel comfortable ins sharing all of these things with you and you can therefore change your teaching styles to match what they need.

• How did you grow in your ability to learn about learners?

  The biggest thing that I realized about what it takes to learn about learners is that the first step is a strong relationship. It takes trust for students to open up and share what they need and it takes a lot of time to really know and understand what the student is experiencing. For example, with Ben it took time to understand what his triggers were for his anxieties and to also recognize when he was being manipulative to avoid work he disliked. Having a positive relationship with him allowed me to navigate this and to work with him through stressful situations. The only way to know a learner is to know the person as an individual and to really understand their needs and motivations.

• In what ways did you expand your abilities to interpret and use this information to design learning opportunities?

  I was able to determine when an assignment needed to be modified, when Ben needed extra support to complete the same assignment as his peers, and when Ben just needed to be left alone to focus and complete the task. For the majority of students, differentiation is not necessarily individualization. For students like Ben, however, individualization is key. 

• How did what you learned about the sociocultural identities of this student impact you as a person/teacher?

  Ben's sociocultural identity is very close to that of my own family. I was actually able to relate fairly closely between patterns in his family and that of my aunt's family (my cousin is a junior in high school and has Asperger's). What I have learned is that many families will have different expectations of their child's school/teacher, and it will be important for me to do my best to meet those expectations while also drawing certain boundaries for my mental wellbeing. 

• In what ways did what you learned about this student as a learner in one content area influence your work with him/her in another content area (literacy, science, etc.)?

  Seeing Ben's strengths in math, science, and nonfiction texts really showed me that his struggle in literacy was not with the content, but with the abstract thinking it involved. This gave me the opportunity to try to phrase things as more of a formula for him to complete writing assignments. I tried to help him think of it as more of a checklist of items that he needed rather than a fluid concept.