Educators understand and apply knowledge of student growth and development.

I personally think that this standard is open to interpretation. There are many different ways of looking at this standard and it includes broad language that can often be misconstrued. For example, perhaps one may be inclined to understand this standard of teachers as ‘masters of content’. But what I believe is that teachers hold not just the knowledge of the content, but knowledge of their students. I believe that with this standard, there needs to be expertise in ‘facilitating’ the knowledge in order to lead to student growth and development. I believe that almost anyone can read information online, then regurgitate that knowledge in front of a class. Although this is something that everyone harnesses, I think that the best teachers are able to extend this planning to more understanding between knowledge and how it applies to students. This standard speaks rhythms to my experiences with students in my recent practicum, as well as to my overall pedagogy as an educator. I had an experience with a student who shared with me their social anxiety about talking in front of the class and sharing certain ideas to the class; however, just from my observations of this student, I could deduce that he was very knowledgeable in his interest with social studies and just needed a boost of confidence. I had worked hard to develop a relationship with this student over the course of a couple weeks, knowing that he was doing extra research on the topic we were covering in his spare time. I had put in extra work for a lesson to better my own understanding of how to teach a certain way and apply certain place-based theories into my practice. But instead of furthering my own practice, I decided to give the floor to this student with the knowledge on a topic during my lecture, asking him to help me recall certain specific details on the topic. This student was so surprised, he jumped into the conversation on topic about how his understandings of Napoleon’s genius in military strategies during the French revolution. It is moments like these that we as educators need to step back and orchestrate these learning curves for students who really need the help in the classroom.