Professional Learning and Ethical Practice
“The teacher engages in ongoing professional learning and uses evidence to continually evaluate his/her practice, particularly the effects of his/her choices and actions on others (learners, families, other professionals, and the community), and adapts practice to meet the needs of each learner.”
My growth as a teacher from the beginning of this program is amazing. I have been able to grow in the classroom as a student, and as a teacher. As a student one of the first assignments that I was asked to do was my Educational Autobiography. This assignment was a brief story of how I came to the decision that my specific talents were best used in a classroom. My instructors also wanted to see how I envisioned my classroom. I came up with two different metaphors that describe how I run my classroom. The one that I especially believe in envisions myself as a coach and the class as a collaborative team. I like this metaphor because it is something I am comfortable with. I have part of dozens of teams and the idea of group success or group failure resonates deeply with me.
Two other pieces of evidence that support ongoing professional learning are my “This I Believe” statement and my philosophy of teaching. These are two reflections on what it means to teach, why it is important, and why I do it. Done in two different classes the “This I Believe” is a brief video, while the philosophy of teaching is an essay of some length. Both these reflections show what specifically drives me. You can also see this in my blog. I think that reflection is very important to self-improvement as you can see on my blog.
I also tried to improve my tactics in the classroom. I gave the students a survey halfway through my internship. I wanted to see what the students thought of my abilities as a teacher. I had them rank me on a scale of 1 through 5 for 15 questions dealing with any number of things. I also left room for comments. The results can be seen to the right. The comments were also very helpful in improving my teaching. For example, I learned that the students hated flowcharts. I do not know why but I had at least two students in each class mention this.