Professional Development Experience

A session planned for a PLC to unpack our diagnostic assessment data, reflect on student progress of Tier II and III identified students and racialize the outcomes to center historically under-served students. 

This planned PLC session, focused on student data and student progress towards year-long goals, is an example of the work I do as a coach routinely planning and implementing professional learning within my school building (III.iii.a) . The session also involved our principal and was an opportunity for her to be a part of the process of reflecting on student progress (III.vi). 

This project highlights my planning process where I begin with clear goals for the session, and plan backwards from there. I found the formal planning template required for this project to be incredibly helpful in bringing clarity to the goals for this session. It helped me focus in on what structures and resources to use in order to create an efficient process to move the group towards the goals I outlined. I would definetly use this tool for future session planning (III.iii.a). 

I am proud of this PLC session because of the deep reflections and insights teachers found in their discussion (III.iii.a). These reflections were in part, I believe, due to the process planning I did: intentional selection of a protocol, pre-planning specific coaching questions to ask within the session, and engaging teachers in relevant data. It helped teachers systemically reflect on the impact of their practice for students, especially our historically underserved students (III.ii.c, III.v.e.). The facilitated discussion allowed this group of educators to collaboratively start to solve the instructional challenges they were facing, something that we will continue in future PLCs.  The conversations we had as a group brought new focus and intention to future PLC topics to explore (III.ii.d, III.iii.c) . 

Mathematics Specialist Standards 

• III.ii.c.: involve colleagues and other school professionals, families, and various stakeholders; and

• III.ii.d.: advance the development in themselves and others as reflective practitioners as they utilize group processes to collaboratively solve problems, make decisions, manage conflict, and promote meaningful change.

• III.iii.a.: Plan, develop, implement, and evaluate professional development programs at the school and/or district level;

• III.iii.c.: support teachers in systematically reflecting and learning from practice.

• III.v.e.: partner with school-based professionals to improve each student’s achievement;

• III.vi.: Select from a repertoire of methods to communicate professionally about students, curriculum, instruction, and assessment to educational constituents—parents and other caregivers, school administrators, and school boards.