Minn. R. agency 188, ch. 8710, TEACHER STANDARDS, pt. 8710.2000

Current through Register Vol. 49, No. 24, December 9, 2024

Part 8710.2000 - [Effective 7/1/2025] STANDARDS OF EFFECTIVE PRACTICE

Subpart 1.Standard 1. Student learning.

A. The teacher understands that students bring assets for learning based on their individual experiences, abilities, talents, prior learning, and peer and social group interactions, as well as language, culture, family, and community values, and approaches their work and students with this asset-based mindset, a firming the validity of students" backgrounds and identities.

B. The teacher understands multiple theories of identity formation and knows how to help students develop positive social identities based on their membership in multiple groups in society.

C. The teacher understands how students construct knowledge and acquire skills.

D. The teacher understands how alignment with a student's cultural background is necessary to make meaningful connections that enable the construction of knowledge and acquisition of skills.

E. The teacher understands the cognitive processes associated with various kinds of learning, including critical and creative thinking, problem framing and problem solving, invention, memorization, and recall.

F. The teacher understands how culture influences cognitive processes and how these processes can be stimulated in a cultural frame.

G. The teacher understands that each student's cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and physical development influences learning and makes instructional decisions that build on learners" strengths, needs, and cultural ways of knowing.

H. The teacher understands the role of language and culture in learning and knows how to modify instruction to make language comprehensible and instruction relevant, accessible, and challenging.

I. The teacher understands language development and the benefits of multilingualism and multiliteracy and knows how to incorporate instructional strategies and resources to support language development.

J. The teacher understands the exceptional needs of students, including those with disabilities and giftedness, and knows how to use strategies and resources to address these needs.

K. The teacher is able to recognize the distinguishing characteristics of reading disabilities, including dyslexia, and knows how to implement appropriate accommodations.

L. The teacher understands the diverse impacts of individual and systemic trauma, such as experiencing homelessness, foster care, incarceration, migration, medical fragility, racism, and micro and macro aggressions, on learning and development and knows how to support students using culturally responsive strategies and resources to address these impacts.

M. The teacher is able to recognize symptoms of mental health illnesses and their impact on learning and knows how to use strategies and resources to address these impacts.

N. The teacher understands the influence of use of tobacco, alcohol, and drugs on student life and learning.

Subp. 2.Standard 2. Learning environments.

A. The teacher knows how to collaborate with students to create a welcoming and inclusive classroom community that reflects the diversity of student cultures in the design of the physical and virtual space, expectations, and organizational routines that represent the needs of all students.

B. The teacher understands the relationship between motivation and engagement and knows how to design learning experiences using strategies that build student self-direction and ownership of learning.

C. The teacher understands the importance of relationship-based, culturally affirming, and proactive approaches to behavior and implements these approaches in order to improve student outcomes and reduce exclusionary practices.

D. The teacher fosters an environment that ensures student identities such as race/ethnicity, national origin, language, sex and gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical/developmental/emotional ability, socioeconomic class, and religious beliefs are historically and socially contextualized, affirmed, and incorporated into a learning environment where students are empowered to learn and contribute as their whole selves.

E. The teacher understands and supports students as they recognize and process dehumanizing biases, discrimination, prejudices, and structural inequities.

F. The teacher communicates verbally and nonverbally in ways that demonstrate respect for and responsiveness to the cultural backgrounds and differing perspectives learners bring to the learning environment.

Subp. 3.Standard 3. Assessment.

A. The teacher understands the varying types and multiple purposes of assessment.

B. The teacher understands how to design, adapt, and select appropriate assessments to address specific learning goals and individual differences.

C. The teacher understands bias in assessment, evaluates standardized and teacher-created assessments for bias, and designs and modifies assessments that minimize sources of bias.

D. The teacher understands the positive impact of effective descriptive feedback for learners, engages students in understanding and identifying quality work, and uses a variety of strategies for communicating this feedback.

E. The teacher knows how and when to engage students in analyzing their own assessment results and setting goals for their own learning.

F. The teacher regularly assesses individual and group performance in order to design and modify instruction to meet students" needs in each area of development, including cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and physical, and scaffolds the next level of development.

G. The teacher, independently and in collaboration with colleagues, uses a variety of data, including data disaggregated by student race, ethnicity, and home language, to evaluate the outcomes of teaching and learning and to adapt planning and practice.

H. The teacher uses assessment strategies and devices that are nondiscriminatory, and takes into consideration the impact of disabilities, methods of communication, cultural background, and primary language on measuring knowledge and performance of students.

Subp. 4.Standard 4. Planning for instruction.

A. The teacher understands Minnesota's English Language Development Standards Framework and uses the framework components to develop learning experiences that support the development of language in content instruction.

B. The teacher understands cross-disciplinary instruction, with particular attention to historically marginalized disciplines to engage learners purposefully in applying content knowledge.

C. The teacher creates or adapts lessons, unit plans, learning experiences, and aligned assessments based on Minnesota's academic standards, or if unavailable, local, national, or international discipline-specific standards.

D. The teacher designs instruction to build on learners" prior knowledge, culture, and experiences, allowing learners to accelerate as they demonstrate their understandings.

E. The teacher plans how to achieve each student's learning goals by choosing anti-racist, culturally relevant, and responsive instructional strategies, accommodations, and resources to differentiate instruction for individuals and groups of learners.

F. The teacher demonstrates the ability to feature, highlight, and use resources written and developed by traditionally marginalized voices that offer diverse perspectives on race, culture, language, gender, sexual identity, ability, religion, nationality, migrant/refugee status, socioeconomic status, housing status, and other identities traditionally silenced or omitted from curriculum by offering a wide range of curriculum materials.

G. The teacher creates opportunities for students to learn, practice, and use language of the content area.

H. Consistent with the local curriculum and state and local academic standards, the teacher demonstrates the ability to create opportunities for students to learn about power, privilege, intersectionality, and systemic oppression in the context of various communities and empowers learners to be agents of social change to promote equity.

I. The teacher explores and applies instructional design principles to create innovative digital learning environments that engage and support learning.

Subp. 5.Standard 5. Instructional strategies.

A. The teacher collaborates with students to design and implement culturally relevant learning experiences, identify their strengths, and access family and community resources to develop their areas of interest.

B. The teacher understands the value of and knows how to implement instructional approaches that integrate real-world learning opportunities, including service learning, community-based learning, and project-based learning, into instruction.

C. The teacher develops learning experiences that engage students in collaborative and self-directed learning and that extend student interaction with ideas and people locally and globally.

D. The teacher uses learners' native languages as a resource in creating effective differentiated instructional strategies for multilingual learners, including those who are developing literacy skills.

E. The teacher provides multiple models and representations of concepts and skills which consider diverse cultural ways of knowing with opportunities for learners to demonstrate their knowledge through a variety of products and performances.

F. The teacher asks questions to stimulate discussion that serves different purposes, such as probing for learner understanding, helping students articulate their ideas and thinking processes, stimulating curiosity, and helping students to question.

G. The teacher engages all students in developing higher-order questioning skills and metacognitive processes.

H. Consistent with the local curriculum and state and local academic standards, the teacher demonstrates the ability to nurture critical thinking about culture and race and knows how to include multiple perspectives and missing narratives from the dominant culture by offering a range of curriculum materials.

I. The teacher varies learning activities to involve whole group, small group, and individual work, and to develop a range of learner skills.

J. The teacher uses technology to create, adapt, and personalize learning experiences that foster independent learning and accommodate learner differences and needs.

K. The teacher employs a variety of strategies to assist students to develop social and emotional competencies, including self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making.

Subp. 6.Standard 6. Professional responsibilities.

A. The teacher understands the standards of professional conduct in the Code of Ethics for Minnesota Teachers, including the role of social media, privacy, and boundaries in relationships with students.

B. The teacher understands laws related to student rights and teacher responsibilities, such as for educational equity, appropriate education for students with disabilities, confidentiality, privacy, appropriate treatment of students, data practices, and mandatory reporting requirements in situations of known or suspected abuse or neglect.

C. The teacher understands the historical foundations of education in Minnesota, including laws, policies, and practices, that have and continue to create inequitable opportunities, experiences, and outcomes for learners, especially for Indigenous students and students historically denied access, underserved, or underrepresented on the basis of race, class, disability, religion, gender, sexual orientation, language, socioeconomic status, or country of origin.

D. The teacher understands how prejudice, discrimination, and racism operates at the interpersonal, intergroup, and institutional levels.

E. The teacher explores their own intersecting social identities and how they impact daily experience as an educator

F. The teacher assesses how their biases, perceptions, and academic training may affect their teaching practice and perpetuate oppressive systems and utilizes tools to mitigate their own behavior to disrupt oppressive systems.

G. The teacher uses a variety of self-assessment and problem-solving strategies to analyze and reflect on their practice and to make adaptations and adjustments toward more equitable outcomes.

H. The teacher demonstrates continual growth in knowledge and skills of current and emerging technologies and applies them to improve personal productivity and professional practice.

I. The teacher advocates, models, and teaches safe, legal, and ethical use of information and technology, including appropriate documentation of sources and respect for others in use of social media.

J. The teacher actively seeks professional, community, and technological resources, within and outside the school, as supports for analysis, reflection, and problem solving.

Subp. 7.Standard 7. Collaboration and leadership.

A. The teacher understands the importance of engaging in culturally affirming, reciprocal communication with families about student development, learning, and performance.

B. The teacher knows how to collaborate with a culturally relevant and responsive lens with families to support student learning and secure appropriate services to meet the needs of students.

C. The teacher plans collaboratively with professionals who have specialized expertise to design and jointly deliver, as appropriate, learning experiences to meet unique learning needs.

D. The teacher demonstrates the ability to identify gaps where the current curriculum does not address multiple perspectives, cultures, and backgrounds, and understands how curriculum and instruction impacts students that are not part of the dominant culture.

E. The teacher recognizes the responsibility to question normative school knowledge, conventional teaching and other professional practices, and beliefs and assumptions about diverse students, their families, and communities that adversely impact learning.

F. The teacher understands multiple leadership models for teachers; knows how to take on leadership roles at the school, district, state, or national level; and advocates for students, the school, the community, and the profession.

Subp. 8.Standard 8. Racial consciousness and reflection.

A. The teacher understands multiple theories of race and ethnicity, including but not limited to racial formation, processes of racialization, and intersectionality.

B. The teacher understands the definitions of and difference between prejudice, discrimination, bias, and racism.

C. The teacher understands how ethnocentrism, eurocentrism, deficit-based teaching, and white supremacy undermine pedagogical equity.

D. The teacher understands that knowledge creation, ways of knowing, and teaching are social and cultural practices shaped by race and ethnicity, often resulting in racially disparate advantages and disadvantages.

E. The teacher understands the histories and social struggles of historically defined racialized groups, including but not limited to Indigenous people, Black Americans, Latinx Americans, and Asian Americans.

F. The teacher understands the cultural content, world view, concepts, and perspectives of Minnesota-based American Indian Tribal Nations and communities, including Indigenous histories and languages.

G. The teacher understands the impact of the intersection of race and ethnicity with other forms of difference, including class, gender, sexuality, religion, national origin, immigration status, language, ability, and age.

Minn. R. agency 188, ch. 8710, TEACHER STANDARDS, pt. 8710.2000

23 SR 1928; 34 SR 595

47 SR 983 eff. 7/1/2025

Statutory Authority: MS s 122A.09; 122A.18