The Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) Standard 9: Professional Learning and Ethical Practice

The teacher engages in ongoing professional learning and uses evidence to continually evaluate his/her practice, particularly the effects of his/her choices and actions on others (learners, families, other professionals, and the community), and adapts practice to meet the needs of each learner.

The artifacts that best encapsulate InTASC Standard 9 are materials I collected from professional development I attended during my Student Teaching Internship

Rationale

The InTASC standards that best exemplify the included artifact are:

9(a) The teacher engages in ongoing learning opportunities to develop knowledge and skills in order to provide all learners with engaging curriculum and learning experiences based on local and state standards.

9(b) The teacher engages in meaningful and appropriate professional learning experiences aligned with his/her own needs and the needs of the learners, school, and system.

9(c) Independently and in collaboration with colleagues, the teacher uses a variety of data (e.g., systematic observation, information about learners, research) to evaluate the outcomes of teaching and learning and to adapt planning and practice.

9(l) The teacher takes responsibility for student learning and uses ongoing analysis and reflection to improve planning and practice.

9(m) The teacher is committed to deepening understanding of his/her own frames of reference (e.g., culture, gender, language, abilities, ways of knowing), the potential biases in these frames, and their impact on expectations for and relationships with learners and their families.

9(n) The teacher sees him/herself as a learner, continuously seeking opportunities to draw upon current education policy and research as sources of analysis and reflection to improve practice.

A description of the artifact, when it was created, the purpose and process of its creation:

The included artifacts were collected during my Student Teaching Internship through the Education Development and Training program at University of Maryland University College. The first is an overview of how to use Ellevation: a program that suggests certain exercises that will benefit ELL students on a given teacher's roster. Ellevation provides teachers with a breakdown of the different nationalities of their ELL students, languages spoken, and whether or not certain students are newly registered in the district as an ELL student. Teachers can view all students together, or they can breakdown students into classes in order to better plan for instruction. Selecting a student allows teachers to view instructional ideas that will be most effective in a given subject.

How does this artifact demonstrate achievement of Standard 9: Professional Learning and Ethical Practice?

Part of what Standard 9: Professional Learning and Ethical Practice asks of teachers is that teachers engage in meaningful and appropriate professional learning experiences that are aligned the needs of the learner, as well as the needs of the teacher. I will be teaching a fair amount of ELL students this semester and I want to be prepared to meet their unique learning needs. Now that I know I have access to Ellevation and I have been trained to use the program, I am able to see what exactly each student needs in order to succeed in my class. I also have access to a number of learning oriented activities that have been proven to help ELL students with language acquisition and reading. Through the use of Ellevation, I will also be able to view already collected data on ELL students, which will make it easier for me to decide what kind of support they need in the classroom. This data will aid in my ability to better predict the outcomes of my lessons.

How has my understanding of the standard been affected by the creation of this artifact?

Through the creation of this artifact, my understanding of Standard 9: Professional Learning and Ethical Practice has been both furthered and clarified. Looking through the academic profiles and ELL statuses of students made me consider how the needs of ELL students can be incredibly varied. Ellevation is a fantastic tool that I plan to use to deepen my understanding of the ELL students I will be teaching and to widen my frame of reference. I also feel as though I should be seeking out further learning opportunities to enhance my understanding of how to approach learning for different levels of ELL students that come from different cultural and language backgrounds.

What are my strengths related to this standard? What do I need to improve on?

A lot of what I thought I knew about ELL students came from my experience teaching ESL and English to students from China. Since their first language was Mandarin and they did not understand a lot of English, which is wildly different from the Chinese language, I viewed ELL students as impaired by their differences. I also thought that most ELL students can practice learning English with the same instructional activities, no matter the language of origin or level of understanding. After browsing Ellevation, I feel I am able to do a better job differentiating instruction depending on the ability of each student. As far as this standard goes, I think I can improve on the amount of professional development that I seek out independently. There will almost always be professional development provided by the school or department, but I feel I need to start exploring the possibilities for developing skills that specifically interest me.

Despite the need to improve on my ability to discover my own professional development, I have been doing my best to attend professional development and to understand ethical practice in the last couple of weeks while I have been at my student teaching internship. I recently attended professional development for the English department in which we learned a new method of instruction, and plan to attend any development opportunities for the remainder of the school year. In addition to professional development through my student teaching placement, I wish to further my teaching ability by taking the Special Education PRAXIS and possibly the ESOL PRAXIS. This way, I will not simply be able to be more versatile in my teaching ability, but will be able to perform various teaching tasks.

Artifacts

"Ellevation" ELL Learning Strategies

Professional Development Information Packet