Reflect on your professional growth plan as an educator (suggested length of 1–3 pages) by doing the following:
1. Describe your overall growth as a teacher thus far.
My overall growth as a teacher has been tremendous, especially over the past five years. I began my teaching career as a day-to-day substitute, and then a long-term substitute. It was not even three months into my experience as a day-to-day substitute that I was given the opportunity to take a long-term substitute position serving a Special Needs Kindergarten class. I knew very little, then, about the art and burden of teaching; yet, I immediately recognized I was a natural, as well as others. One of my strenghts from the beginning was forming positive relationships with my students and overall classroom management. One of my weaknesses was content pedagogy. While I had knowledge of the content for all of the courses I served as a long-term teacher in, I needed improvement in how I applied that knowledge in utilizing teaching strategies to implement deeper learning for my students.
After serving as a long-term substitute for about 6 years, I decided to start my own virtual tutoring services during COVID, and I began to learn an array of teaching strategies and strategically applied them to certain topics across various subjects based on student needs. This gave me more experience with applying teaching strategies to facilitate student learning.
Now that I am in my third year as a permanent high-school English teacher, and enrolled in a Secondary English Masters Program, I have had more experience than ever to grow in all areas of the teaching field.
a. Describe a specific professional development activity, and explain how the activity has helped deepen your knowledge of the subject matter content you teach.
A specific professional development activity that I've participated in that has deepened my knowledge of the subject matter content I teach is the weekly PLC meetings I attend twice per week, especially the meetings I have the opportunity to receive support and feedback from the instructional coach. In these PLC meetings, I collaborate with the other grade-level ELA teachers to create lesson plans we will implement in the classroom to successfully teach the standards/learning targets that are present in each unit plan provided by the district. We discuss teaching strategies each individual teacher will use to facilitate student learning and we plan the calendar days we will spend per lesson, per learning target, and per unit. We also discuss potential student misunderstandings of each learning target and strategies we would implement to clarify that projected student confusion. This experience has helped me deepen my knowledge of the subject matter content that I teach because it has better informed me of ways I can facilitate the teaching of the standards being implemented in each lesson throughout a given unit. For example, my PLC team collaborated to construct a graphic organizer to better facilitate student understanding of the learning of the standard, RL3 [3.04_4]; how to analyze how complex characters develop the theme of a text. With this graphic organizer, I can more easily communicate to students the process to follow to better understand the content being presented, and to show student mastery of the overall concept.
b. Describe a specific professional development activity, and explain how the activity has enhanced your use of content pedagogy in the classroom.
A specific professional development activity that I've participated in that has enhanced my use of content pedagogy in the classroom is a district training I did in August 2024 that dissected the GA Standards of Excellence for Secondary English teachers. This district training also discussed various teaching strategies that could be used to implement the facilitation of each standard. This activity has enhanced my use of content pedagogy in the classroom because it has given me a clear framework in which to teach the GA Standards of Excellence for Secondary English to my students in an effective and intentional way. For example, I have applied the C.E.I. method (claim, evidence, and interpretation) discussed in the training to teach students standard, RI8 [3.0_2]; to evaluate the argument and specific claims made in a text, assessing whether the reasoning(s) given in the text are valid. This district training has equipped me with a better understanding of the expectations of the student for each standard by providing examples of student work at each level of completion: exceeds expectations, meets expectations, approaching expectation, and does not meet expectations. Being I have a better understanding of the expectations of the student, I can better plan the lesson(s) I implement to facilitate the learning of each learning target.
Note: For parts D1a and D1b, examples of development activities could include in-services, PLCs, district training, conferences, presentations, videos, readings, or professional conversations.
2. Describe a specific example of collaborating with grade-level, subject, or cross-curricular teams to analyze student data.
A specific example of collaborating with a grade-level team to analyze student data is my participation in weekly PLC meetings twice per week. I meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays for PLC meetings, and Thursday's meetings are specifically for data analysis, and is referred to as 'data day'. On data days, we discuss the data collected from individual teachers regarding certain assignments aligned across each classroom for that grade-level. According to the data observed, decisions are made regarding future academic content and further instruction.
a. Explain how the collaboration on student data from part D2 influenced the planning and modification of your future instruction.
The collaboration on student data influences the planning and modification of my future instruction by informing me of what concepts and/or learning targets I need to revisit and reteach to students, what concepts and/or learning targets my students have mastered completely, and what teaching strategies I need to incorporate or eliminate in further instruction to clarify and decrease common student misconceptions. Learning targets/standards that my students have mastered completely I will not revisit, learning targets/standards that my students show lack of mastery on I will strategically incorporate into upcoming lesson plans. For the learning targets/standards that my students show lack of mastery on, I will also strategically analyze the teaching strategies previously used to facilitate the concept(s) and incorporate more effective research-based teaching strategies.
b. Explain how the collaboration on student data from part D2 helped you grow as an educator.
The collaboration on student data helped me grow as an educator by informing me on what learning targets/standards I need additional growth in communicating and teaching to students. Any concepts that my students show common confusion on is revealing to me an area of improvement in either the materials I used to facilitate the concept(s), the strategy or strategies I used to communicate the concept(s), the time I spent on a concept, or even the overall relationships I formed with my students. In my experience, you can be the most skilled educator with the most expertise in your content area, but if you do not form positive relationships with your students, then all of that expertise will not transfer into student knowledge. Student data also helps me grow as an educator because it reveals to me what I am doing well. When students show lack of mastery on a learning target, and then show mastery after some time, this reveals certain strategies and processes I used that were successful in propelling student learning and increasing student mastery of previously confused concepts.
3. Identify a professional educational organization (e.g., NEA, ASCD, NSTA), and describe a specific example of information or materials provided by the organization that contributed to your development as an educator.
A professional educational organization that has contributed to my development as an educator is Lexia Learning Systems LLC. Lexia is an educational organization that offers LETRS training, a professional development program that teaches educators how to teach reading and spelling. Lexia has provided several materials that I have incorporated in my classroom to facilitate the fostering of my student's spelling and reading development, such as the LETRS Phonics and Word-Reading Survey, the General Phonics Lesson Plan template, the Instructional Routine to Introduce a New Word, and the M.U.S.T. strategy to choosing a book to read for your class. The resource I use the most is the Instructional Routine to Introduce a New Word to facilitate the introduction of unfamiliar vocabulary words present in a given text. This resource suggests the following be done in order to introduce a new word: have the student pronounce the word while also discussing the word's syllables, morphemes, spelling, part of speech, and etymology; define the word using a template given; give examples of the word being used in the correct context; ask students "yes" or "no" questions about the word's meaning; and elicit word use by the students within a 'think-pair-share' dynamic using a given template.
4. Provide insight into your future professional growth by doing the following:
a. Describe a specific goal for how you want to grow as an educator.
A specific goal for how I want to grow as an educator is the facilitation and analysis of student surveys. I love the idea of using student surveys to grow as an educator because they are a direct method of detailing and identifying student thoughts on their experience in the classroom, such as: how they feel about their relationship with the teacher, what teaching strategies they feel are most effective in the classroom, what misconceptions or confusion they have regarding the academic content, and what improvements they feel could be made to better their understanding of the content and their overall experience in the classroom. Giving students the opportunity to communicate their experience in the classroom and give feedback through a survey also allows the student to be included in decisions made about future academic instruction, social-emotional development, and classroom management.
*I would also like to grow in my ability to provide differentiated instruction to my gifted, IEP, 504-plan, ELL, and overall struggling students. I am most experienced and efficient in whole-group instruction; and while this is not a terrible strength, in today's educational climate it is essential that I am able to tailor instruction to meet individual needs. I would, particularly, like to develop in my ability to provide differentiated instruction to my English Language Learners, as this is where I have the least amount of expertise. I would like to learn more learning strategies and accommodations that I can implement in the classroom to better facilitate the academic content for my ELL learners, and provide them with the necessary accommodations to ensure their mastery of learning targets.
b. Discuss professional growth activities in which you will participate in order to accomplish your goal from part D4a.
Some professional growth activities in which I will participate in order to accomplish my goal of providing quality differentiated instruction is a district training offered by the county discussing the rollout of the new standards being implemented by the state for the next school year, a professional development course in differentiation implementation strategies in an ELA classroom, and various PLC meetings with the grade-level instructional coach. These activities will present me with the opportunity to gain new strategies in planning and facilitating differentiated instruction in my classroom, while also equipping me with a framework for how to implement differentiated learning for various student populations. These professional growth activities will also provide templates for a variety of student surveys I can utilize in receiving much needed feedback from the students I am providing the differentiated instruction to.