Professional Growth Plan

I think the area I’ve grown in the most in teaching is facilitating discourse. The first time I tried implementing the discourse practices was on October 16th and I saw a noticeable difference in how the discourse went across class periods. It helped to foster the collaborative learning environment and positive social interactions described in InTASC standard 3 (Learning Environment).

That day, my CT was out sick and had asked me to lead a review activity before the students took a test in the next class. The first block of the day did not go well for a number of reasons, and I spent the conference period after reflecting on where I could improve, in line with InTASC standard 9 regarding reflection. One of the changes I settled on was to change how I structured the discourse.

After I put a problem up on the board, I would set a timer and monitor students’ responses while they worked. If I saw something I wanted to see discussed, I would ask the student to share when we came back together as a class. Some students were reluctant, but others were excited to contribute and even come up to the board to show what they were thinking. This went much more smoothly and I saw the class get more engaged this way rather than just directing a question at the class generally.

I’ve also grown in my lesson planning (InTASC standard 7). I had said at the beginning of the semester that I felt confident that I could write quality lessons, but I also felt that I needed more practice to be able to write them quicker because it took me a long time to write them when I had done it in the past. This semester I wrote more than I had ever written and got more efficient at it. I figured out what features I wanted in each of my lesson plans and could add those to each one.

I feel like I have a lot of room for improvement in my classroom management. Often when I was teaching a lesson, my CT would take over classroom management so I could focus on teaching. I plan to improve my skills in the seminar led by Dr. Kreye which will go over, among other things, classroom management.

While I feel inexperienced with classroom management, I am excited to get more practice with it in the Spring. Christiansburg Middle should be an interesting challenge because the behaviors will be so different as opposed to High School . I look forward to gaining more experience and building on what I learned from this Fall.