Department of Teacher Education

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Standards for teacher preparation

Adopted by the Department of Teacher Education TP-APPC at its meeting of April 25, 2006

A teacher standing in an empty classroom thinks about the tasks ahead:

employ a liberal education,
teach a subject matter (or several),
engage and respond to students,
organize a class (or several),
use an equipped classroom,
join a faculty and school,
engage parents and community, and
grow professionally.

1. Employ a liberal education

Code	Label	Performance
1a	Communicate effectively	Communicate effectively by listening, speaking, writing, reading, and visual representations.
1b	Value education	Model the value of education in a free and pluralistic society, particularly the role of intellectual and ethical values.
1c	Uphold rights & responsibilities	Model respect for the role of the individual in a free society, including the importance of individual responsibility and respect for individual rights and values.
1d	Respect difference	Model respect for individual differences (culture, race, gender, religion, and ethnicity) and for different points of view, ethics, and values.
1e	Respect communality	Model respect for similarities within our culture and their importance to the fabric of American society, and for humankind's shared heritage and environment.
1f	Recognize the political economy	Relate the Constitutions and histories of the United States and Michigan, as well as the market system for allocating resources.
1g	Model global perspectives	Model global and international perspectives.
1h	Care for your students	Unconditionally accept students, strive to meet their educational needs, build competence to meet their needs, and show visible care about their well-being and learning.

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2.Teach a subject matter

Code	Specific label	Performance
2a	Promote free inquiry	Promote appreciation of free inquiry in the humanities, the social sciences, the mathematical and natural sciences, and the visual and performing arts.
2b	Represent subject matter validly	Validly represent and model the subject matter(s) that the teacher teaches.
2c	Teach for understanding	Create learning environments that promote critical and higher order thinking skills, foster the acquisition of deep knowledge, and allow for substantive conversation with the teacher and/or peers about subject matter.
2d	Seek relevance & authenticity	Engage students in practical activities that demonstrate the relevance, purpose, and function of subject matter to make connections to the world beyond the classroom.
2e	Connect knowledge	Represent, model, and coach the use of knowledge from the liberal arts to analyze, synthesize, and reflect upon ideas, information, and data.
2f	Promote independent learning	Model and coach the search for and use of current information, technology, and other resources, to help students become independent learners and problem solvers.

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3. Engage and respond to students

Code	Specific label	Performance
3a	Respect, care & communicate	Respect, care for, and communicate with all students. Recognizing both the challenges they face and the resources they offer, hold high expectations for all of them and work tenaciously toward their well-being, learning, and achievement.
3b	Adapt the curriculum	Apply knowledge of human development and learning, and get information from parents and colleagues, to adapt the curriculum to students. Set measurable goals for their cognitive, affective, physical, and social learning.
3c	Employ multiple strategies	Balancing individual, classroom, and community needs, employ a range of academic, social, and emotional strategies to enable all students to learn and succeed in and out of school.
3d	Motivate and engage	Find ways to motivate and engage all students in the activities of the class, treating student affiliations and characteristics as resources in the classroom.
3e	Include, accommodate & differentiate	Include, accommodate, and/or differentiate instruction for, each student, considering maturity, history, interests, achievement, and learning styles; cultural, racial, social and ethnic affiliations; and exceptional needs and abilities.
3f	Assess and adjust	Offering special testing arrangements to students who need them, employ multiple formative and summative assessments of learning to adjust plans and instruction in response to students' interests, strengths, backgrounds, actions, and learning.

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4. Organize a class

Code	Specific label	Performance
4a	Promote shared values	Create a productive environment for learning, where students develop shared values and expectations regarding their interactions, academic work, and responsibilities.
4b	Pursue equity & inclusion	Make the class an inclusive and equitable community, with diverse cultural approaches to community and interaction.
4c	Organize democratic inquiry	Foster an ethical and democratic classroom environment that supports and respects inquiry, curiosity, and risk-taking in intellectual and social contexts.
4d	Teach students their parts	Teach students the connections between learning community qualities and subject matter goals; sensitize students to the needs of their classmates; teach and model how to make appropriate accommodations.
4e	Structure participation	Employ a variety of participation structures to engage students in meaningful learning, decision-making, problem solving, and conflict resolution.
4f	Organize activity	Employing routines where desirable, organize and introduce activities and technologies so that students are prepared for them and can carry them out successfully, making good use of their time.
4g	Assess and adjust	Assess class interaction and adjust the organization to improve the fit between classroom management strategies and instructional goals.

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5. Use an equipped school room

Code	Specific label	Performance
5a	Design the classroom	Design the classroom as a safe, functional, attractive, and motivating physical environment.
5b	Use multiple modes	Use multiple literacies, materials, and media to promote inquiry, social interaction, and learning.
5c	Provide access to technology	Provide appropriate access to technology for all students; actively seeks ways to get all students to work with available technology and other resources to reach learning goals in and out of school.
5d	Technologically enhance learning	Employ technology to enhance learning environments and curriculum, aligned with Michigan’s policy and curriculum, that maximize student learning.
5e	Technologically enhance assessment	Apply technology to facilitate a variety of effective assessment and evaluation strategies.
5f	Monitor technological issues	Exercise and model alertness to equity, ethical, legal, social, physical, and psychological issues surrounding the use of technology in P-12 schools.
5g	Teach care of the room	Teach students to take care of the classroom equipment, materials, and other resources.
5h	Assess and adapt the room	Monitor and adapt the physical environment on a daily basis to provided the intended environment, include all students, and use the resources of the room to promote learning.

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6. Join a faculty and school

Code	Specific label	Performance
6a	Attend to policies	Identify and balance various policy options and demands to maximize student benefit, including communicating to students and their families
6b	Forge a school-based practice	Work with school colleagues to assess and improve school goals, policies, curriculum, and instruction; set expectations aligned with those; and use the resources of the school to support student learning.
6c	Participate in accountability	Participate actively and sensitively in school assessment, evaluation, and certification processes, and uses findings to improve practice.
6d	Foster learning communities	With colleagues, seek and use research, theory, and other professional and collegial resources to learn about students, curriculum, and pedagogy, and to design goals, curriculum, and classroom practice.

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7. Engage guardians and community

Code	Specific label	Performance
7a	Guard students’ welfare	Recognize and respond to signs of family situations that threaten student well-being.
7b	Recognize diverse family structures	Create learning environments that recognize diversity in family structures.
7c	Engage parents & guardians	Treat parents and guardians with respect, work with them to set expectations and support their children’s learning, and communicate assessment data to them clearly and sensitively.
7d	Use the community in teaching	Guarding against stereotyping, flexibly and sensitively learn about the community, use local history and current issues in teaching, and use community resources to support student growth and achievement.
7e	Communicate with the community	Communicate and interpret aggregated assessment results clearly and sensitively to community members, in ways that convey the strengths and limitations of these measures.
7f	Advocate for children	Advocate for students and their education, and for children's welfare in the community at large.

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8.Grow professionally

Code	Specific label	Performance
8a	Meet a teacher's responsibilities	Accept and meet a teacher’s legal and ethical responsibilities (e.g., student retention, corporal punishment, truancy, least restrictive environment, child abuse, managing conflict, first aid, health, and communicable disease).
8b	Cultivate a teacher’s manner	Participate constructively in the school community, modeling the best of human qualities including honesty, respect, & fairness, and adapting appearance, demeanor, and communication to each situation.
8c	Forge a teaching philosophy	Articulate, justify, act on, and adapt a personal philosophy of teaching and learning that is consistent with current theory and with the ethical and legal standards of the profession.
8d	Negotiate working relationships	Negotiate one’s identity and commitments in interaction with important others. Especially, seek responsive, demanding, and supportive relationships with students.
8e	Teach responsibly	Habitually, reflect on feedback and on the consequences of choices and decisions, use multiple sources of information to assess practice and results, and recognize and change behaviors that are inconsistent with accepted standards and good results.
8f	Teach inquisitively	Systematically study one’s teaching, deliberately applying theories, concepts and ideas from coursework, considered teaching experience, and continuing professional development to one's practice .
8g	Assess and respond	Tenaciously and skillfully assess and evaluate curriculum, instruction, and technology, and diligently use the results to improve both practice and results.

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