InTASC Strategy 9: 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.
As a teacher, one should be constantly looking for experiences to expand their professional learning and ethical practice. In doing this, it should lead to a natural process of reflection on one’s instruction and their relationships with members of the school community. By reflecting on this, a teacher is then able to determine what works in their instruction and what needs to be altered in order to meet all the needs of the students and their families.
In my teaching experiences, I have participated in numerous professional learning experiences. From these experiences, I then worked on identifying how this new information might then be applied to my own teaching. Two professional learning experiences standout in my mind more than the others do.
One of these experiences was to get a better idea about interventions that were going to be used at the school, specifically in the area of reading. This can be seen in the “Xavier – Professional Development” artifact. This artifact goes over the different parts of interventions that the teachers would be using in the school and why we were going to be using it. Since I was in a first grade classroom, this was actually a follow up for what our classroom was already doing. We were one of two grade levels picked to try the interventions before introducing them to the whole school. Thus I got to be a part of how these interventions work that they are talking about in the presentation. Our own grade results can be seen in slide 34. This intervention that we did took 20 minutes of our day to was very scripted and specific about what the students were supposed to do and for how long. Upon reflecting on the scores gotten from before the intervention and after, one could see a very clear growth in the students. The artifact “Xavier – Scenarios and Strategies” includes other strategies that were provided to us at the professional learning, some of which we practiced on the scenarios provided.
My other main experience with professional learning took place at Carver in which we looked over the fall’s DIBELS scores (Carver – Fall DIBELS Data artifact) and discussed what seemed to be going well and where improvement was needed. This was focused on grade levels, and I was part of the kindergarten group. After deciding on the norm that we were going to talk about (Carver – 7 Norms of Collaboration artifact), we discussed and reflected on what we could glean from our information. This can be seen in our posters in the “Carver – Professional Development” artifact. Then all of the grade level groups reconvened and discussed what teachers were noticing happening across the different levels.
These artifacts show putting information into action (first group of artifacts) and sharing the results so that others may use the information to help in their own instruction. They also show school-wide discussion and reflection (second group of artifacts) that is important in developing instruction. This information from both professional learning experiences will be used and expanded on as more information and opportunities arise.
In my teaching experiences, I have participated in numerous professional learning experiences. From these experiences, I then worked on identifying how this new information might then be applied to my own teaching. Two professional learning experiences standout in my mind more than the others do.
One of these experiences was to get a better idea about interventions that were going to be used at the school, specifically in the area of reading. This can be seen in the “Xavier – Professional Development” artifact. This artifact goes over the different parts of interventions that the teachers would be using in the school and why we were going to be using it. Since I was in a first grade classroom, this was actually a follow up for what our classroom was already doing. We were one of two grade levels picked to try the interventions before introducing them to the whole school. Thus I got to be a part of how these interventions work that they are talking about in the presentation. Our own grade results can be seen in slide 34. This intervention that we did took 20 minutes of our day to was very scripted and specific about what the students were supposed to do and for how long. Upon reflecting on the scores gotten from before the intervention and after, one could see a very clear growth in the students. The artifact “Xavier – Scenarios and Strategies” includes other strategies that were provided to us at the professional learning, some of which we practiced on the scenarios provided.
My other main experience with professional learning took place at Carver in which we looked over the fall’s DIBELS scores (Carver – Fall DIBELS Data artifact) and discussed what seemed to be going well and where improvement was needed. This was focused on grade levels, and I was part of the kindergarten group. After deciding on the norm that we were going to talk about (Carver – 7 Norms of Collaboration artifact), we discussed and reflected on what we could glean from our information. This can be seen in our posters in the “Carver – Professional Development” artifact. Then all of the grade level groups reconvened and discussed what teachers were noticing happening across the different levels.
These artifacts show putting information into action (first group of artifacts) and sharing the results so that others may use the information to help in their own instruction. They also show school-wide discussion and reflection (second group of artifacts) that is important in developing instruction. This information from both professional learning experiences will be used and expanded on as more information and opportunities arise.