Abstract: The purpose of this simulation workshop is to show the potential of simulations and how they can help to advance the growth of aspiring and/or novice teachers. The webinar allows participants to take part in an engaging and collaborative development session with peers from around the country. Simulations, generally, help teachers to become more confident in their decision-making abilities by creating a risk-free environment where participants have an opportunity to practice and fail as they face difficult situations. In this particular simulation, the participants will handle a challenging book that focuses on LGBTQIA identity while addressing parent concerns and student needs while interacting with the school board and administration. In this workshop, participants are afforded opportunities to work through authentic school-based issues and practice decision-making to improve learning and retention regarding an LGBTQIA identity issue that happened at a school. By expanding their experience portfolio, aspiring and sitting teachers build resilience and extend capacity to prepare them for real-life challenges. This workshop provides a powerful and affordable way to deliver highly effective teacher training. The simulation will ask participants to illustrate professional decision-making that will foster positive relationships with students, families, and colleagues. Participants practice critical thinking and are encouraged to discuss the reasons behind their choices.
Objectives
This session will share an example of the simulation as an exemplary practice of creating conducive learning spaces for our teacher candidates and novice teachers to examine how to support the inclusion of various identities in their elementary classrooms. These are spaces where they can make mistakes and learn how their actions affect multiple stakeholders. In this workshop, the participants with have the opportunity to work with the simulation and increase the learning regarding the effectiveness of online spaces to foster learning among teacher candidates and novice teachers. In particular to this sim, learning is focused on an emotionally laden, challenging topic, i.e., supporting gender identities in the classroom. This simulation, also, provides opportunities for the participants to examine the support of LGBTQIA families in developmentally appropriate ways. As more and more educators use simulations, the field will learn which types of simulation designs work best for which content and skills. This will help to grow the field and its use of various tools to strengthen teacher preparation. As we prepare teachers for the future, we need to employ learning spaces that provide opportunities to engage with hard topics such as challenged books and widening the curriculum to support student identities. This future casting session will provide an opportunity to engage with a sim, as well as discuss the use of online, adaptive learning spaces for teacher education programs.
Topical Outline
Building Inclusive Classroom through working with a simulation
Prerequisites
No prerequisite knowledge or experience is needed
Experience Level
Beginner
Qualifications
Dr. Gretchen McAllister and Dr. Hoda Harati are faculty members in the College of Education at Northern Arizona University. Mr. Ken Spero is the founder of SchoolSims. NAU and SchoolSims developed the first TeacherSim for the first time focusing on Building Inclusive classrooms through dealing with challenging issues for first-year teachers and teacher educators.
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