The Professional Role:
I
see myself as a professional role model for beginning teachers. Each week our K-2 team meets to discuss a
wide variety of information about the core subjects and students. In these meetings I have taken on the role of
leading and facilitating them each week.
Reading and writing is discussed at least twice a month, with all
teachers providing input and suggestions.
Through these meetings teachers are able to implement new
strategies. I myself have been able to
walk away with great ideas, implemented them, and returned to share the outcome
with the team. (see sample focus meeting minutes).
Another area that I have grown this year is mentoring para professionals and an ELL aide. Through sharing information of strengths and areas to improve, the students are the ones that are benefiting from this mentorship. With the ELL aide I taught her how to administer a reading intervention working on sounds/blends. I allowed her a week to administer the intervention and then checked into see how it was going. The students were beginning to grasp the concept much faster and were showing improvement. I answered any of her questions and then allowed her to continue working with that group of students. I found keeping an open communication where she felt comfortable coming to me with questions was vital in helping her to reach success. On the other hand I also had to be willing to offer constructive criticism in helping her to improve. Mentoring someone helps both individuals grow, but the final outcome is to best serve the students.
This past year I have also worked very closely with our tutor in our building. Training and offering this person the lessons needed to evaluate the progress of students not meeting expectations was held at the beginning. Every couple of weeks the students are assessed and I meet with the tutor to answer questions and also view the progress of the students she has been working with. Since she is tutoring the students, I also have her conduct the assessment. This means that I also have to choose assessments that will not only tell me what the child knows, but also to instruct her how to administer them correctly. At the beginning it was a learning curve, but with practice and time we both became better at working together. On my part I needed to know what the child was working on, but also to understand what reading/writing method would be the most beneficial to the child. Knowing and understanding the various theories helped to place the child with the correct intervention.
Within our building I feel that I am strong professional leader changing and making it so the students are able to succeed better. Within the past two years I also have taken that role outside of our building and to our district. I have been asked to sit on a team of 2nd grade teachers to work on improving what is expected of 2nd grade students in our district. In this week long work session, formative assessments are evaluated, grading card rubrics revisited, and best practices are discussed. Having recently taken several courses that all promote best practices of teaching reading and writing (see course work), I have been able to share the knowledge I have gained with others. I have taken what I have done with co-workers in our building and have started sharing this information with others. For example, I take each test question the students take and break it down into a spreadsheet to determine areas of strength and areas of weakness. From this information I am able to quickly pinpoint lessons that I need to review again. (See data spreadsheet) I shared all this information with other teachers, some teachers were greatful others looked at it as more work.
Growing as a professional is a never ending adventure, there are always new things to learn and try. Becoming comfortable sharing what one knows takes time, but one that many people can benefit from. A good teacher is always learning, growing, and sharing information with others. The learning never stops!
