Access
The teacher has exposed students and their families to people, programs, resources, and connections that can open doors for them, and they are able to navigate and access those opportunities.
Introduction
Access is the opportunity to provide students with a new experience. This is important for my 5th-grade students as they transition into a new stage of development, adolescence; on in which they begin to identify who they are as individuals. By conducting a needs survey, I was able to identify areas to research and create new opportunities. In my classroom, students gained access to knowledge around food deserts,, talk with a local representative and Ph.D. student on the topic of food access and visit a college in a different state. Each of these experience would not have been available to my students traditionally. From these experiences, students have been able to explore a number of possibilities for their own future.
Conclusion
From the evidence captured in this section, I have demonstrated how I have provided students with access to various topics within and outside their community. Specifically, highlighted in this section was my role in preparing the activities that prepared students for each experience such as explicit instruction, surveys, and independent research. Through my explicit instruction students were able to connect their learning in mathematics to food deserts organically by creating a map of their own neighborhood. From this activity, students were prepared to dive into the topic of food deserts through an examination of video and text. Through this guided research and personal connection, students were able to create powerful questions during a guest speaker. These skills became valuable again when students research different colleges and universities to prepare for their trip to the University of Connecticut. The impact of this trip is evident in student survey with 100% of students stating they would like to continue visiting colleges and universities. Each of these pieces of evidence proves the impact these opportunities have had on providing students access some, of the many, possibilities they have for their future.