Professional Growth Plan and Reflection

It is my personal belief that I have grown tremendously as an educator during my Demonstration Teaching placement. One way that I have grown as an educator is through professional development activities. One specific professional development activity that we did as a school staff was an analysis and breakdown of student data on state assessments. This activity helped deepen my knowledge of the subject matter of the content I teach by providing insight into areas of concern among students as they get older. It showed areas to work on specifically, where students were tending to struggle on state assessments as they got into grades 3-6. One specific area of concern was the student's ability to summarize/retell information from reading. This insight allowed me to gain knowledge of the reading content, and work directly with school support staff to adjust our reading curriculum at the first-grade level to include more summarize/retell practice.

Another specific professional development activity that we did that I did with fellow staff members was a PLC with my fellow grade-level teachers. We looked deeply into the math curriculum and talked about strategies for teaching a specific module. This enhanced my classroom pedagogy by giving me tools and strategies to teach my students certain math concepts. A collaboration with grade-level teams to analyze student data was done with all grade-level intervention teachers. This collaboration looked at all student reading and math scores and determined which intervention groups students should be placed in based on ability and student needs. This collaboration influenced the planning and modification of my future instruction by allowing me to analyze what my students were struggling with, and what they were seeming to do well. I was then able to adjust my reading instruction to be a bit more rigorous, and my math instruction to include place-value lessons, as many students seemed to struggle with this concept. This collaboration helped me grow as an educator, as it gave me direct insight into how student data is analyzed, and how intervention/grade-level teams collaborate with each other. Overall, I have grown a ton as an educator during my time at WGU. I have learned pedagogical strategies in all subject areas, I have gained in-classroom experience, I have built positive relationships with other WGU students and staff members, and I have gained valuable critical thinking skills throughout the entire process. All of these things, among others, have allowed me to grow as an educator, and to continue to work on my craft.