Justin Medved

Welcome to your first post!: Following each Cohort 21 Face to Face session, we will provide you with several questions to reflect on. By making your thinking visible and publishing your thoughts to this blog, you will be able to engage our powerful support and feedback system and accelerate your professional growth. Please follow the following steps:

1. Answer questions #1 and 2 below.
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4. Click the  “Helpful WordPress Tutorials” link on the left sidebar to explore some of your blog’s features.
5. Answer the questions  below by Nov 1st so we can give you feedback before our 2nd face to face session on Nov 19th @ Havergal
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Question 1: During the first face to face we used the language of Urgent vs Important to help frame our thinking around our use of TIME. Reflect on why you joined Cohort 21 and your professional goals for this year. Now that the year has begun and you have met your students what IMPORTANT  goal might you like to address and leverage this community to get support with?

Question 2: Which of the Season 13 Strands resonates with you and why? Share what you feel is both urgent and important about it for you and your school at the moment and some of the questions you have about moving forward.

Question 1: During the first face to face we used the language of Urgent vs Important to help frame our thinking around our use of TIME. Reflect on why you joined Cohort 21 and your professional goals for this year. Now that the year has begun and you have met your students what IMPORTANT  goal might you like to address and leverage this community to get support with?

In meeting my 7th grade students this year, one of the first things I noticed was their need for social relationships as an essential step in finding a sense of safety and belonging in the Middle School.  This is a major intake year, with about 50% of the students being brand new to our school community. The first few weeks of school have really been about satisfying the first three levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Physiological, Safety, and Love & Belonging. Once students figured out the general layout of the campus, including where the washrooms and cafeteria are located (physiological), they could find a sense of security in their new routines (safety). It was then time for them to venture into new and emerging social connections (belonging). My focus has been on building classroom community; a caring and brave space in which students feel that they can bring their most authentic selves to the fore.

Thinking more about the belonging piece, I began to consider ways in which I might create opportunities for students to feel seen, heard and valued in every aspect of their unique selves. This includes all aspects of their personal, social and cultural identities.

My goal is to incorporate storytelling in both my English and Humanities and Social Science classrooms as a method for building student belonging. My hope is to help students move into the “Self-Actualization” category of the hierarchy.

Question 2: Which of the Season 13 Strands resonates with you and why? Share what you feel is both urgent and important about it for you and your school at the moment and some of the questions you have about moving forward.

The DEIJ strand resonates most with me. While it is something I try to be intentional about in my own classroom, I want to see more tangible connections between the work I’m doing and the work the school is doing more broadly.