Professional Growth Reflection & Growth Plan

I have grown considerably as a teacher over the course of my enrollment in the Master of Arts in Teaching program at Western Governor’s University. I think that what has changed the most in my understanding of the practice of teaching has been how I approach the process of gauging student learning and mastery through assessment. I believe I had a pretty standard viewpoint on how students should take tests and prove their understanding of the material covered, that being what I understand now to be a slightly adversarial stance where I expected students to prove through taking tests and producing projects that they had gained the knowledge that I wanted to impart to them. Now, looking back on my time in my student teaching placement, and as a result of many in-depth conversations about the subject of assessment and mastery with my mentor teacher, I have come to understand that the process of assessment is all about the student’s ability to show their understanding and mastery of the standards-based skills and concepts that we are teaching them. Most importantly, that my place as their teacher is to provide them with every chance and opportunity to show that mastery.  What precipitated this change in perspective was a day where I was reviewing the unit final assessment they were going to take the next class period with my students. The review consisted of covering the vocabulary they needed to know for the matching section of the assessment, then answering four questions based on a reading of a poem and a song. These questions were identical to the questions that would be on the next day’s assessment, only the poem and song that the students would analyze would change. When I was speaking to my mentor teacher about the review, I expressed that it felt like cheating, that we were just giving the students everything they needed to complete the assessment. I felt like the students did not need to earn anything. My mentor teacher then explained that the point of the assessment was not to have the students show their understanding of a specific poem or song, but for them to demonstrate mastery over a skill. This was something I knew logically, but it was not until that conversation when it clicked that what she said was exactly right. My role is not to challenge my students to regurgitate knowledge back at me, it is to guide my students and facilitate their mastery of the skills and concepts they will require to be successful.

During my demonstration teaching I was able to attend many different professional development meetings and professional learning community (PLC) meetings. One that stands out in how it helped deepen my knowledge of my subject matter content, English Language Arts (ELA), is when I attended a PLC meeting and worked with the grade level ELA teachers to discuss the upcoming unit. We spent the meeting dissecting the standard that we were going to be covering in that unit (CCSS R.L. 7.2: Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text) and unpacking it into learning targets for the unit. I learned so much in this PLC meeting about the process of taking a standard and turning it into the curriculum that will actually be taught to the students, and then how to use the learning targets that are created through this process and designing assessments to properly and effectively measure the students’ mastery of the standard. Specifically, I was able to deepen my understanding of a concept about which I had previously felt confident, my own ability to recognize the theme and central idea of a text, through a thorough exploration of how we would teach the process to our students. By refreshing and increasing my knowledge and skills in this arena through the creation of the curriculum used for this unit I was better prepared to teach the material to my students. This resulted in my further growth as a teacher by showing me how vital a professional learning community is for supporting individual teachers and bringing all of the content area teachers together to tackle the process of teaching as a team.

Another professional development activity that helped me grow as an educator by enhancing my use of content pedagogy in the classroom was a discussion I had with my mentor teacher about the proper modeling required to keep students attentive and on task during an assignment. When I started my demonstration teaching placement, I was liable to give my class a list of instructions “Please take out your chromebooks, open Canvas, navigate to the modules tab, and open the assignment for today” and then be confused as to why over half of my students were lost. What she taught me was how to relay a series of instructions to a class in a clear, easy to follow manner that allowed all of my students to follow along and remain engaged. This involved modeling the process on the Smartboard, slowing down, and checking with my students at each step to ensure that everyone was on the same page and following the directions. Once I was able to put that process into practice, I saved time and frustration overall as I was working with my students to get them prepared for a lesson instead of dictating to them the instructions I expected to be followed. Internalizing this has allowed me to grow as a teacher by giving me more patience and a better understanding of how to gain and maintain my students’ attention at the beginning of a lesson.

One of the most instructive professional development activities that I engaged in was a meeting where I was able to collaborate with my mentor teacher, another grade level ELA teacher, and the school’s English language learner (ELL) specialist in order to analyze student data. The data in question were the preassessment and summative assessment results that we gathered about our classes that had the highest percentages of ELL students. My mentor teacher and the other grade level teacher were engaged in a year long project where they were using the same curriculum and pacing their classes together. This allowed them to come together and assess how they were supporting the ELL students in their classrooms. We were able to see in the data collected where our ELL students were achieving and where they were struggling, and we were able to react to this by adjusting how we were teaching these students. Specifically, we decided that offering the students the ability to choose texts that were in their native language to respond to. They were still expected to complete the same work as the students who spoke English natively, but they were able to do that work using stories that were originally written in their native languages. What was important for our outcomes was not necessarily that the ELL students complete the assignments and show mastery of the standard in English, just that they show mastery of the standard. Going forward in my teaching career, I will always endeavor to use student data to determine where my student succeeded and where they stumbled, and then using that information to audit my instructional decisions. I will always strive to adjust my teaching on the feedback that I am getting from my students in the form of assessment data. I believe that this collaboration on student data helped me grow as a teacher by showing me the importance of responding to trends in student data.

While the community inside my host school was welcoming and informative, I also utilized outside resources for inspiration and development. The professional educational organization I relied on the most was the National Education Association (NEA). A specific example of information that the NEA provided that contributed to my development as an educator was a series of lesson plans, videos, and articles about Dr. Martin Luthor King, Jr. that I was able to use to augment my instruction about Dr. King during the King holiday. Having a professional resource like the NEA that allows me to lean on the expertise and experience of consummate educators is a boon that will continue to contribute to my development as an educator for years to come. I will continue to rely on the NEA as an institution that will foster my professional growth as a teacher, and I look forward to contributing to the organization to help future generations of teachers as well.

One specific goal that I have for how I want to grow as a teacher is improving my skills at differentiated instruction. I have many years of experience teaching all kinds of different students in various settings, but I learned the importance of differentiated instruction in the classroom during my student teaching placement. Between my standard students, gifted and talented learners, ELL students, students with IEP and 504 plans, and students with other special needs, it sometimes feels like I need to prepare six or seven different lesson plans for every single class! In order to learn more about how I can properly support all of my students by providing instruction that meets their individual needs, I am going to continue to research and read articles about how I can best differentiate my instruction for my students. I believe that it is of paramount importance that teachers continue to educate themselves in new practices so they do not fall into the habit of trying to teach the same content the same way for thirty years. Along with research, I will also reach out to the teachers around me who have a proven track record of successful differentiated instruction in their classrooms. I believe that by collaborating with and learning from established teachers who have shown they understand how to plan and manage a differentiated classroom I will be able to benefit from their knowledge and expertise. These professional development activities will allow me to continue to grow and develop as a teacher in order to provide my students with the best possible education that I am able to supply. Of course, these activities guarantee that I will never have to supply that education in a vacuum, I will always have the support of my colleagues, my union, and decades of research to rely on.