4-2 Leadership, Participation, and Collaboration

The candidate seeks appropriate leadership roles and opportunities to take responsibility for
student learning, to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other school professionals,
support staff, and community members to ensure learner growth, and to advance the profession.

Being a leader is not a position above others, rather it is a role or actions taken to start a
movement. These actions must be actions of service towards your students as you do everything
you can to help their learning. That being said, it is a teacher’s responsibility to create student
learning by serving and supporting your students in every possible way for that cause. You must
also take on the responsibility to embody and energize that push by inspiring and motivating
everyone around you in this process of student learning. This cannot be done without
collaboration from your students (the learners and sole focus of this process), families,
colleagues, other school professional (such as administration), and community members. This
can exemplified through events such as band booster meetings and community outreach. This
collaboration helps you as the teacher create a support system for yourself as you take on this
responsibility of student learning.

During my student process experience I was able to experience leadership, participation, and
collaboration I a number of ways. My first artifact is a performance by the jazz band at the
Olathe East High School where I did my secondary student teaching. During most of my time
there, the group was preparing for a competition (the Basically Basie Competition) at the Jazz
Summit held at KCKCC. During this time was able to collaborate with students as I lead
sectionals and give comments to help them improve during rehearsals. I was also able to speak
with parents of the students while at the competition. The whole experience with the
competition, riding the bus there with the students (making sure everyone was accounted for),
supporting them as they performed, and getting to hear some great groups, music, and get helpful
feedback made the experience very educational for students. I am ensured that they grew as
learners. The second artifact is an example of the leadership role I had in helping prepare for the
first-grade musical. I taught the students all the lyrics and actions to the songs, and was able to
guide them as they performed for their parents at the concert. The third artifact is similar to the
first in that I helped students prepare for a performance. In that process I developed a good
rapport with the students and supported them by leading sectionals and providing helpful
feedback and encouragement. I was then able to cap that off by going to their performance with
them and learning from great professionals.