Professionalism, Leadership, & Advocacy

Every summer, I attend a multi-week intensive with Golden Apple Scholars known as the Scholar Institute. I meet with other scholars and mentor teachers for a week long in-person session, where we take classes on instructional strategies, classroom management, intersectional issues in education, etc., and meet with a reflective small group to discuss and apply what we are learning in mock lessons and to share tips and tricks that we've picked up throughout our field work experiences and our classes. Following the in-person session, we meet virtually with our reflective groups for a few more weeks to continue to practice teaching strategies and discuss what we're doing and learning during our summer school fieldwork. During these sessions, in addition to valuable additional training and teaching experiences, I also have begun to develop a professional network connecting me to other teachers in my cohort as well as more experienced mentor teachers, which I can turn to for advice, feedback, and support. 

This demonstrates performance indicator 9O, which states that the competent teacher, "participates in professional development, professional organizations, and learning communities, and engages in peer coaching and mentoring activities to enhance personal growth and development." Scholar Institute provides valuable professional development using peers and mentors for feedback and discussion, and serves as a professional learning community where I have been able to develop important relationships with other teachers. 

The Modern Classroom course outlines a classroom model that utilizes technology and groups-centered learning to provide differentiated instruction and encourage student ownership of learning. Students meet with teachers in small  groups for instruction on a regular basis, and while not in small groups, students work independently at their own pace to complete learning activities---the teacher records modeling videos and demonstrations/instruction, as well as provides additional resources online for students to use when they get stuck in their independent work. This allows all students to be following the same structure, but working on content at a different pace: advanced students can move through practice exercises quickly and move on to more complex content, while students who need more support can work through additional practices and re-teach when needed. This also allows students to have more individual time with the teacher, and the teacher can more closely monitor student understanding when working in small groups. After taking this course, I have started implementing a similar model of teaching in my classroom, where almost all instruction is done in small groups, while the rest of the class works on independent exploration, studio time, or practice exercises.

This demonstrates indicator 9Q, which states that the competent teacher, "proactively serves all students and their families with equity and honor and advocates on their behalf, ensuring the learning and well-being of each child in the classroom." In taking this course and implementing the skills and knowledge that I learned from it, I am taking proactive steps to make sure that students' individual needs are met with equity, recognizing that some students need more support in some areas than other students, and that some students require more rigorous challenges. It would be easier to implement whole-group instruction all the time, and this is the structure that I encountered in the classroom most often, but I asked to make adjustments to provide more individualized instruction that allowed me to differentiate effectively and monitor student progress, and ensure that each student is learning.