Through the professional advancement institutes and my development dialogue at Bayer, I have determined professional development goals for my year ahead. By working on these goals, I hope that my instruction will improve and that student achievement and engagement will increase. As teachers we are dedicated to forever being lifelong learners. The chart below details the goals, resources needed, and potential barriers to reaching these goals.
| Goal | Resources Needed | Potential Barriers |
| 1) Development of a vertical PLC | -Genuinely interested teachers.
-Space for teachers to meet and collaborate. -Occasional substitute and/or TA coverage of classes for teachers to conduct peer observations. -List of agreed upon best practices in K-6 for all content areas. -School Improvement Plan data |
-Teacher engagement and interest.
àPossible solution: offering professional development credit for participating. -Common time for teachers to meet. àPossible solution: Meet on staff meeting day on the weeks there is no staff meeting as this is a time that is already carved out of teacher’s schedules and dedicated to being at school and collaborating with others within the school. |
| My newest and latest goal is creating a vertical PLC. This goal was inspired by my recent attendance at the statewide math conference. At the conference I attended a session on using action-based research as part of a vertical PLC community. The project presented was reasonable and positively impacted student learning. Furthermore, the project led to better staff communication between grade levels which is most likely another factor in the positive impact on student learning. I would love to see this happen at our school and feel confident after attending the session how it could be organized. After reading the Next Generation Science Standards and thinking about what science and engineering practices mean for classroom instruction, I have a much better understanding now of how to have conversations with others about classroom practices. In my idea plan of an action-based vertical PLC, the group would:
1) Review the school improvement plan 2) Identify an subject area of weakness throughout the school 3) Consider the practices of that content area 4) Develop ideas for strengthening a particular practice for that content area 5) Developing pre and post questions to ask students that relate to the area of practice 6) Implementing ideas to strengthen practice 7) Opportunities for teachers to observe peers implementing these ideas 8) Organizing and collecting data to determine student impact I have already spoken with and sought approval from my administration which is completely only board with this idea. |
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| 2) Provide meaningful and accessible methods of parental involvement in student learning | -Online platform to share information with parents.
-Parent engagement to find out what parents really want/need from schools. -Access to curriculum materials for grades K-6 to translate academic expectations and standards into parent-friendly language. -Database for surveying and categorizing areas of parent expertise in our school community. |
-Finding a group of parents representative of our school population willing to provide feedback on parent needs/wants from the school.
-Possible solution: start with the parents in my own classroom who I already have relationships with or even parents from previous years that continue to be part of our school community. -Figuring out how to best design a survey and create a database of parent expertise. -Possible solution: speak with technology facilitator about my goals and received feedback on how the project could work. |
| There is a lot of potential for the parent community of Helena Elementary. A parent is a child’s greatest advocate and as a fifth grade teacher, I want to be especially sure that parents understand what is expected of students at school and how they can be part of that experience before heading off to middle school. A lot of parents who I have encountered seem to have a mentality that I should do my “thing” as a teacher and they should do their “thin” as a parent until there’s a disagreement, problem, or question that arises. But really, there is so much more that we can be doing to work together that would benefit students on an ongoing basis. In order to make parents feel more welcome simultaneously increase the engagement of students in learning, I am hoping to survey parents on their areas of expertise whether related to a job and/or hobby. I would then consider the areas of expertise and the K-5 curriculum and find alignments so that if there is a parent who would be a great resource for the fourth grade team when they learn about North Carolina government structures, that team does not have to wait until that child is in fourth grade to be aware of that resource. Connecting parents and teachers with the shared purpose of bettering the educational experiences for our students is the main goal of the tasks completed for this section. | ||
| 3) Lead students in metacognitive strategies by developing a growth mindset | -Pre-assessments for math and science units.
-Bull’s Eye (test analysis sheets) for all assessments. -Goal setting resources. -Professional readings and books on fostering student leadership such as The Leader in Me. -Visualization resources for students to view and track their learning growth. |
-Having district assessments in enough time to create student reflection resources in a timely fashion.
-Student apathy and disbelief in the growth mindset. |
| I am passionate about helping students realize their potential when effort is put forth. So many students have a concept of whether they are “smart” or not. Fortunately, in my own science curriculum I get to address this when we discuss learned and inherited traits. Intelligence is flexible, not static, but this is not always how students, or even parents perceive their achievements. To help students visualize their potential, a large part of this goal is developing reflection strategies and resources for students to reflect on their achievements and set goals for future achievements. | ||
| 4) Recognize and capitalize on the interconnectedness of content areas | -Professional readings on best practices in each content area and consider instruction from this point of view.
-Guided reading materials that align with science/social studies curriculum. |
-Managing the constant influx of new resources, materials, readings in conjunction with state, district, and/or school expectations for reading instruction.
-Finding and having access to research on quality professional reading about interdisciplinary teaching. |
| Finding the most natural and relevant ways to integrate science and social studies content into reading instruction will be an ongoing process. I have spent a lot of outside time reading through various curriculums, implementing strategies, and plan to continue doing this research as I now consider how content-based practices can impact interdisciplinary learning. Often, reading materials are not presented in a way that logically connects with social studies and science instruction so it can be very time consuming to separate various readings and find the best way to help readings “flow” with content-specific units. I have really improved on knowing what I want my literacy block to look like to authentically integrate science/social studies but often do not have the time to make it what I want it to be. Something I am still unclear on with interdisciplinary instruction is how to manage multiple lesson essential questions simultaneously. In an integrated block a teacher would have both a content-specific lesson essential question and a reading skill lesson essential question, if not also a writing skill lesson essential question. In the past, I have taught one lesson essential question at a time. I guess the whole definition of “integration” is something that I am still working out in my practice. Through this course I have now been able to consider more of the theory behind practices and I hope to find an answer when for managing the multiple curriculums within those practice connections between content areas. | ||
| 5) Provide professional development for others based on my experiences | -Opportunities and time to develop and present PD for co-workers.
-Method of collecting feedback to improve effectiveness of presented professional development. |
-Receiving quality feedback.
-Possible solution: Ask myself how can I design feedback questions that will both inform me of whether or not I was able to effectively communicate the message I wanted and also not take a significant amount of time for those completing the questions. |
| I have spent so much of my own time making sense of this wonderful profession and seeking out resources to make learning more meaningful that I feel sharing these learnings and resources is a natural step in my leadership development as a teacher. Furthermore, providing professional development to teachers will help me reach a greater number of students than what I can inside the four walls of my own classroom. | ||