At the beginning of this unprecedented year, I set two main goals for myself in my ILP. The first main goal was to improve engagement in my classroom that serves children from all different backgrounds and grade levels. My second goal was to intergrade myself in the school culture by promoting school-sponsored activities and at the time involve the community in the budding school garden plan.

Now being at the end of this first year of teaching and comparing my Initial CSTP and my final CSTP Self-Assessments it is astounding where my passions for teaching have taken me. To engage all my students in my lessons I have carefully designed differentiated lesson plans that incorporated bloom’s taxonomy worded essential questions suited for each grade level. Compared to the beginning of the year I am now to teach concepts with varying degrees of difficulty according to the grade level. I am also better equipped to support the lower performing student’s in my class by using a multitude of strategies, such as sentence starters, providing multiple avenues of receiving the information, and targeted questions.

Another big difference that I have observed in this initial year of teaching is how much more immersed I am in the culture of the school. At the begging of the year, I thought this meant to create awareness of the school’s efforts to bring about a school garden. To accomplish this goal, I wanted to involve students and parents in its promotion. So I created an end of school day class where students would come to participate in the school newspaper. Each student was given a prompt and was expected to contribute to the Del Rio Newspaper. The result was amazing, each student under my guidance was able to contribute school-themed comics, staff interviews, school garden polls, opinion articles, spirit day dates, and school advice columns. Parents were thrilled and loved participating in the school’s opinion polls and newsletters. Before I moved schools midyear, I was able to leave a student-lead newspaper club at that school.

As I changed schools, I kept pursuing my goal of immersing myself in the school culture. I still continued my practice of sending out interactive class newsletters where parents and students can contribute their opinions and reflect back on their past work. I considered my goal for this year accomplished when I organized a student-made event. While teaching a bizworld class (grades 3-8), I guided the students through the entire entrepreneur process from production to sales. Teams of students were able to create with their own companies and line of products. I had students come in and set up their shops and product stands in my classroom. I invited their families and all nearby classes to come shop at the Bizworld bazaar. To further, involve parents I created clipboards to grade and rate how each of the companies presented themselves and their products. It was a huge turnout!

Looking at my Initial CSTP and your Final CSTP Self-Assessments I have either moved up in rank or maintained my level. I look back at this year and I can say that I enjoyed the entire process and all the experiences that are building me up to be a better teacher.

Being in the classroom I was able to observe my areas of strength in action. One of my areas of strength is utilizing formal classroom appropriate language as I teach. Another area of strength is remaining flexible and adaptable. For example, when I moved schools midyear I had to adapt to an already established classroom, continuing student progress and change the environment to fit my teaching style. I have also noticed that I’m getting increasingly becoming more proficient at balancing time management for both individual and guided instruction.

Although I have made progress in these areas, I want to keep improving student engagement in all ability levels, finding more strategies to meet more needs of higher-performing students, and building upon concepts for each class.

This year has been so great for me. It has had its fair share of growth opportunities and curveballs. Personally I saw myself becoming more, flexible, and communicative. I am now more proactive in reaching out for resources and more assistance in my areas of inexperience.

During this whole process, I am most proud of how I handled my transition from a college setting to a professional classroom setting . I have adapted to every change with enthusiasm and a positive attitude. I have challenged myself to take on more growth opportunities and trying out different ways to teach.