9. Professionalism, Leadership, and Advocacy

This is a small portion of a self-assessment that I completed for an assignment within the class entitled "Student Teaching Seminar-Contemporary Issues."  We were asked to read through each question and reflect on how we thought we were doing in our performance for each focus that was listed.  This was to provide us with the opportunity to look internally and reflect on how we thought we were doing and to essentially serve as a professional progress monitoring tool for us as we moved throughout the completion of our student teaching placements. 

This artifact meets performance indicator 9K which states, "The competent teacher reflects on professional practice and resulting outcomes; engages in self-assessment; and adjusts practices to improve student performance, school goals, and professional growth."  This highlights how I actively engaged in self-assessment and how this aligns with not only progressing towards professional goals and creating individual goals for myself as an educator, but also how I gained valuaable information from which I can adapt my teaching practices to promote improved student performance in my classroom.  Within this standard as a whole, there is a focus on being an ethical practitioner who demonstrates a strong sense of overall professionalism and contributes to being an active leader within the context of learning communities.  Throughout completing this self-assessment, I took a deeper look into my teaching abilities and evaluated myself in different areas for where I was performing at that point in time during my student teaching placemement.

The biggest thing that I learned from doing this self-assessment was to offer yourself grace as an educator.  I think that this is important for all people to do, but I feel like often times teachers are their own worst critics and only see their short-comings, rather than celebrating themselves and being excited about where they are excelling and what is going well in their classrooms.  That being said, I realized throughout completing this self-assessment that I am indeed my own worst critic as well and that even though there are areas where I may not be as strong when it comes to my teaching abilities, that does not mean that those areas can't be improved upon over the course of time with more continued practice, mentorship, and active work towards achieving my professional goals.  It made me recognize the importance of offering ourselves grace as teachers, but more importantly as humans in general and allow room for mistakes to happen and be turned into learning opportunities rather than being seen as mountains that can't be moved.  

This is an essay that I wrote for an education class during the time in which I completed my teacher licensure program to become a fully licensed special educator.  We were asked to write an essay from the perspective of where we each came from and include the phrase "I am a child of..." to preface the unique backgrounds we each were coming to the class with.  This phrase was based on an excerpt that we read as part of our class work prior to being asked to write our own essay.  Within this excerpt, the author shared a personal insight into where she came from as being as she stated it "A child of Chattam."  We were all told to dig deep and reflect on where we came from and where we have been in our lives so to speak and how those lived experiences brought us to where we are and have helped shape and mold us into who we are today. 

This artifact meets knowledge indicator 9E which states, "The competent teacher is cognizant of his or her emerging and developed leadership skills and the applicability of those skills within a variety of learning communities."  First of all it ties to the standard overall in the portion that discusses providing leadership in the learning community and being active advocates for students, because by creating this cultural awareness essay about where I come from, I was able to do the necessary work to be an effective leader for my students.  What I mean by that is, in order to be an effective leader who can provide leadership in the learning community, first you must come to terms with you are as an individual and professional and what possible personal biases you may have that you never came to grips with.  Once you do that and go through that process it prepares you to enter into leadership with a more clear mindset of where you come from and also how to interact with and collaborate with others who may be different from you, because you have already realized how diverse the world is and how in the U.S. especially there is this "melting pot" mentality that continues to evolve and develop over the course of time.  In terms of how this artifact connects to and meets this specific indicator being highlighted here, I would say that it connects to the part that talks about being cognizant of our individual emerged and developed leadership skills and how these skills can be reframed and outlined through experiences such as this one that I had when I wrote this cultural awareness essay.  I was able to better understand myself, where I came from, my own lived experiences that contributed to who I am today and also how they transfer over into different arenas within my life, especially my approach to teaching.  This goes along with this indicator when it discusses the applicability of our emerging and developed leadership skills that we then take and put into action within varying contexts and learning communities that we are a part of as professionals, especially within the teaching profession.  We can share what we learned about ourselves with others and how we believe this transfers into our teaching approach and how we go about structuring our instruction and the way we present content to our students.  

When it comes to what I learned throughout writing this essay for my class, I would say that I learned what it meant to look within ourselves and go back and reflect on where we come from and how this translates into all things that we do in our lives-how we interact with others, especially those who are different from us, the way we uphold ourselves, and the things that we value as important, etc.  I also learned how it is important as educators to remember our why and that even though we are different from the inviduals we will be working with as our staff and serving as our students, does not mean that we should let our personal biases and difference of opinions get in the way of being an ethical and reflective practitioner who exhibits professionalism and consistently advocates for and on behalf of students, their familes, and the teaching profession overall to continue to be an advocate for change, growth, and development.