This little comic represents my teaching philosophy in a single image, and if I am to select a single word that

defines my practice, that word is accessibility. My primary objective is to make the curriculum as accessible as
possible to all students who enter my classroom. As such, the intersecting frameworks of Universal Design for
Learning and Differentiated Instruction form the basis of all of my teaching. I always strive to ensure my teaching
is as student-centred as possible, which is why I spend the first few days of a new class getting to know my
students strengths, needs, interests, and goals. This way, I can create content and adapt teaching materials based
on the unique profile of each new group of students, instead of coming in with an LES and accompanying
materials and activities and expect my students to conform to pre-established objectives.
Incorporating ICT into the classroom is an important professional competency within the context of the QEP, and
this is perhaps the most important competency to my teaching practice, and is one of the ways Im able to make the
curriculum more accessible to my students. I have created a course website for every single class I have ever
taught in adult education. I think its incredibly important that students and their families know what we are working
on in class, and, as such, I make abridged versions of each lesson plan complete with learning objectives
available every day. With the exception of the books I teach and the daily journals my students complete, my
classroom is now almost entirely paperless and students complete all of their assignments on Google Classroom.
This allows them to keep an online portfolio of their work, and allows me to closely monitor their progress. I also
regularly incorporate the use of iPads in my classroom, and one of the ways I support my students in developing
multiliteracy and digital citizenship is through teaching them effective and responsible use of a variety of apps
across a number of platforms.
I am a big believer in culturally relevant teaching, and while in my ELA classes I do my best to provide students
with a sense of the literary canon, my primary objective is selecting texts and media that are relevant to the diverse
learners in my classroom. As such, most of the texts I provide to my students are high-interest, contemporary,
multimodal, and created by authors whose diversity reflects that of my students.
I have a lot of trouble with blanket statements about student success and achievement, as the meaning of each
of these terms is highly context- and student- specific, and I feel the same about classroom management, which
varies according to each class I teach. To me, classroom management is about flexibility and responding
appropriately to the needs of my students, and not about rigidity and students having to conform to a
predetermined set of expectations. When I welcome my students to my classroom at the beginning of the term, one
of the first orders of business is for the students to develop and establish behavioural norms for the class. Finally, I
believe that fair is a highly subjective term, and that each challenge in the classroom requires a specific,
individualized intervention.