10. Professional Responsibilities
Candidate works to enhance job performance and advance teaching as a profession.
I am a life long learner. I enjoy going to classes and workshops regarding anything in the education field but primarily curriculum design. I figure that our students are changing with technology, different kinds of harassment issues, and home issues. If I stay aware of the new methods of teaching and the latest information about the social issues of the community I will be able to better serve my students. Attending classes and workshops will only help my students because I will be giving them the latest researched methodologies that enhance student performance.
Some of the education that I have been working on is my masters degree with the ESOL endorsement. The classes that I have taken have opened my eyes to the fact that I have ESOL students in my classroom and I was not sure that they have understood what I was teaching because of the way I was teaching it. I have seen a change in the way I teach students in the last year. In this time I have started to use graphic organizers, model my directions more, and create accommadations for the students that need it. Example of what I am doing now where as before I was teacher centered in my teaching and now I am more student centered in my teaching.
Another way I try to enhance my classroom is that I am consistently observing my own classroom. I look at student behavior, transitions, and groupings to see if what I am doing is working. If it is not, I would talk with students, change seating charts, or possibly reteach a transition. The point is that I am always looking to make sure the time the students are in my classroom is spent learning, not watching disruptive students or losing time in transitions. Finally, I work with other teachers to learn from them. We talk about the various ways that we teach and the results that we get. I am looking for strategies that I currently do not use that would be helpful for content learning. I have used a lot of the strategies that I have gotten during these meetings and I feel that my classes have benefited from it.
