On Monday, December 6, 50 students in EDU 460 & 760 presented their course portfolios to the public in an exhibition held at the Castellani Art Museum. The students were asked to present evidence of their achievements of the 10 nationally accepted Standards for new teachers (INTASC) to teachers, community members, Niagara Univeristy faculty and families. The session was highly productive: over 200 guests spent the evening discussing teaching and learning with a great group of young professionals, who dazzled them with interactive sessions, intrigued them with engaging learning plans and demonstrated a host of technologically-savvy accomplishments. The tone of the session was informal and friendly, yet serious dialogue ensued across various levels of the educational landscape and across the diversity represented in the experiences of this international gathering.

Every student who participated in this community activity, earned the privilege to move forward into Student Teaching, the internship that links their University experiences into their futures as productive, creative, dedicated and passionate teachers of adolescents in the US and Canada. These candidates have demonstrated their ability to teach in the effective manner expected by Niagara University: they are able to produce constructivist learning experiences, assess student understanding in a reflective manner, and are able to see learning as both process and product. Both the course and this session, patterned after the model promoted in the course text (Flynn, Mesibov, Vermette and Smith, 2004), were huge successes.