City U works with its teacher candidates to reflect and set ongoing goals concerning dispositions that are essential to the teaching profession. You are encouraged to have conversations about these essential dispositions with your candidate, as appropriate.
Develop Equity Literacy
- Actively engage in developing and deepening your own equity literacy and commitment toward anti-bias, antiracist teaching practices
- Examine power dynamics in systems, policies, practices, materials, situations, and interactions
- Interrogate your own intersectional identities, experiences, biases, and cultural lenses which impact your interactions with others and/or implementation of curriculum in the classroom
- Strengthen skills of becoming a threat to inequity by disrupting educational systems, policies, and practices that oppress, marginalize, or otherwise harm students and families
- Hold space for multiple truths to co-exist
- Recognize, celebrate, and leverage cultural funds of knowledge as strengths in yourself and your students
Build Relationships through Collaborative Practice
- Maintain active engagement in coursework and professional responsibilities for the duration of the program
- Attend all required classes and scheduled meetings and communicate proactively with all stakeholders if your plans change
- Speak for yourself and your own experiences. Invite and empower others to speak their truths in their own voices.
- Recognize and celebrate strengths and brilliance in peers, colleagues, self, and students
- Demonstrate commitment to leaning in toward discomfort during difficult conversations for the purpose of deepening learning, strengthening relationships, and building community with others
- When concerns or a need for problem-solving arises, communicate with those closest to the issue first
- When relationships rupture, seek repair through acknowledging the difference between intent and impact, and communicate in ways that preserve the dignity and humanity of those involved
Engage in Self-Reflection for Personal and Professional Growth
- Identify personal and professional growth areas and set realistic goals for improvement
- Demonstrate evidence of meeting improvement goals
- Receive, reflect upon, and apply feedback from peers, program directors, mentors/supervisors, and students
- Adopt an inquiry mindset when there is dissonance between the feedback you receive and your frame of reference, assumptions, or experience
- Prioritize your own mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing through self-care, self-advocacy, and setting appropriate boundaries between personal and professional realms.
- Communicate your needs with instructors, program directors, supervisors, and peers when necessary
- Maintain appropriate boundaries and be thoughtful about what and with whom you share personal information about yourself and/or your students
Uphold Professional and Ethical Standards
- Evaluate, analyze, and apply complex information and ideas from a variety of perspectives in a variety of forms (listening, speaking, writing, lesson planning, teaching practice, etc.)
- Complete and submit coursework that meets professional standards
- Demonstrate time-management and prompt/substantive communication with stakeholders (program directors, course instructors, supervisors, etc.) to meet professional expectations in the program and in the field
- Attend required classes and scheduled days in the field
- Develop awareness of school and district laws, policies, and regulations which impact your work as a teacher
- Develop awareness of school and community resources/services for supporting your own and your students’ basic needs (mental health, shelter, food, clothing, etc.)
