Developing as a Professional Educator

Professional Growth Goal Review

~Professional Growth Goal Reflection: In your ILP at the beginning of the year, you set a professional growth goal. After a year of job-embedded support, were you able to achieve your goal?   

 At the beginning of the year, like so many other teachers I chose to concentrate on student engagement through the use of a distance learning model. Specifically, Distance Learning CSTP -4 "How can I maintain engagement during students' synchronous distance learning environment?" While I would love to sit here with a smile on my face screaming to the heavens for all to hear that "I did it," the reality is a more bitter reluctance of understanding that when it comes to keeping middle school-aged children motivated and excited for every lesson during a worldwide pandemic was an unrealistic goal. Don't get me wrong. I put in the work, the time learning all of the new tech tips and tricks, and I fostered rapport with each and every student, yet through all of the all-night work sessions, the tears, and the time spent away from my family I realized that a teachers influence can only go so far. There is no replacement for a safe environment for learning where students have a quiet space, perfect technology, and food in their stomachs. While I may consider the professional growth goal a failure, I do so with a boldface asterisk next to it within the record book. While I may never be able to regain the time lost with my family, what I have gained is an extensive set of tools and experience that I can put to use within my classrooms of the future along with a healthy respect for the impact within a student life whether or not they have a support system at home or outside of school.  

Responses can be text or multimedia.

• • Revisit the overarching, long-term goal you set for yourself in your ILP. Compare and contrast your Initial CSTP and your Final CSTP Self-Assessments.

Initial assessment =   *

Final Assessment =    ~

In what ways have you surprised yourself?

• Looking back through my initial self-reflection and the post evaluation of myself, I am surprised at how I have rated myself higher through most categories given the trying time of COVID and distance learning. I have seen experienced teachers fall apart, clueless as to how to adjust to this new scenario and style, but through tenacity and the willingness to adapt, I was able to overcome many of the challenges that hindered others. I honestly felt that my self-assessed scores would be lower or the same as the initial assessment. I am happy with my progress.

Describe a professional goal you have for yourself beyond induction. Why have you identified this as a need or interest? What actions will you take? How will you assess goal attainment?

• It is my belief that innovation is born through strife and challenge. While many consider the contact use of technology a hindrance through distance learning, I am taking the opposite approach. It is my goal to create what is called a flipped classroom where students will be able to take advantage of their familiarity and availability of technology to inhance their chances for reteaching and guided support through a digital medium. It is my goal to create lessons for each and every skill that we will practice and master within the 7th grade ELA course and convert them to digital format. In essence, students will be able to listen to lectures, instructions, and examples at their own pace in order to absorb the information more thoroughly. I chose this goal because I have seen firsthand how much instructional time is lost while having to repeat the same lesson or instruction over and over and over again. With this model, I hope to create a classroom atmosphere that is focused more on student work and immediate teacher feedback. I will know if this model of instruction is working by examining the time spent per subject matter in order to obtain mastery and comparing it to past classes. I will also be able to observe formative and summative assessment data for any positive or negative trends. While there is a lot of work that has to take place outside of the classroom and before the year even starts, I feel the creation of these videos and online graphic organizers will ultimately be a boon for my students learning achievement. 

What actions can you take to remain a connected educator throughout your career?

• In order to remain a connected educator, you must first adopt the mindset that you can always improve. No matter how amazing you are feeling about a lesson or your teaching skills, there is always room for improvement and innovation. It is with this midset that you must reach out to fellow colleagues, both old and new and learn from every one of them. Each teacher has a unique perspective and way of doing things and something can be learned from observing or talking to them about the craft. I personally feel that you must also join larger consortiums of teachers through social media as they can, have, and will be an amazing resource for you inside and outside of the classroom. 

What can you do personally and professionally, to sustain the energy it takes to be passionate about students, teaching, and learning? / What advice do you have for new teachers entering the profession?

To those that are entering the profession, the best advice I can give you is to designate a time for yourself. You must be able to set a shut-off time for work. Without a concrete barrier between your work/school life and your personal life, you will begin the process of teacher burnout that happens all too often within the profession. Unfortunately, while this advice is easy enough to type, it is unrealistically hard to achieve. As a new teacher, you are destined to find yourself at home, at night, and on the weekends, replying to an insane amount of administrative e-mails while anxiously looking at that stack of ungraded work you have taken from work to home and back again for three days. I went down this path, it seems we all do. Nine out of ten times we give in and tell our family and loved ones that you just need an hour or so to get caught up (more like four or five), and then you can spend some time with them. You cannot get this time back. Let me say this louder for those in the back, YOU CANNOT GET THIS TIME BACK.  The grades can wait. The e-mails can be answered during the next school day, and that lesson you created doesn't need to be laminated and color-coordinated to be a great lesson. If you take time for yourself and if you set those boundaries you will be a better teacher and human being.