This has been quite a week: two classes per day, twenty-four hours of intestinal hell, and rain enough to want to climb into an ark.
I have, however, managed to get my homework done (again!) well before the due date. This week it happens to be the KTIP Task E, in which I was supposed to reflect on my strengths and weaknesses and come up with a plan for growth. Here's the section where I described them:
Identify your strengths in terms of tasks and related standards.
After self-reflection and conversations with my ST and Dr. Gibson, I believe that my strengths lie in the areas of applying content knowledge (Standard 1), planning instruction (Standard 2), and building a safe learning environment (Standard 3).
I have a growing understanding of English language and literature that has come from a life-long love for words and stories. It is what I do in my free time – I read and write – and not necessarily for academic purposes as often as for enjoyment.
However, English being fun for me is not, on its own, a strength in the classroom; there are plenty of people whose love for and understanding of English far exceed my own. What turns my passion into a classroom strength is that I do not want to keep it to myself but share it with others. Before being a teacher ever crossed my mind, I spent countless hours and long nights discussing literature and language with family, friends, and even an occasional stranger. And upon entering college, I began tutoring on a daily basis and leading study groups. When I began my MAT, I started teaching ESL on the college level and began learning how to communicate my passion to people from diverse backgrounds and people groups. My students from those classes have gone on to excel in higher level English classes, and I believe that their success is due to their hard work and the structure for the classes that I developed.
Because of my enjoyment for sharing stories and words with others, the classroom is exactly where I want to be. And because it is exactly where I want to be, I am able to build solid rapport with my students – whether they are from China, Nepal, Brazil, or Whitely County. I think that students can sense when a teacher actually wants to be there with them, and the teachers who want to be elsewhere are far easier to ignore or dismiss entirely. Students reflect what teachers model in the classroom.
Identity areas for growth (tasks and related standards for which you might need support or assistance to be successful) and types of professional development you will need.
Again, after reflection and several conversations, I believe that I need to grow in the area of assessment and communicating learning results (Standard 5) – both in frequency and reflection upon results in an attempt to improve instruction. Although I believe I need to grow in this area, I believe my difficulty with it arises from my misgivings about the underlying philosophy of traditional assessment. I understand that teachers assess conscientiously and that they sincerely believe traditional assessment is the best way help students grow in understanding and application of information.
But does it really work? Even if test scores go up, or if there is data to support that learning is taking place, what impact is it making in the all-important real-world? Is the crime rate dropping? Are their fewer unwed mothers? Are their fewer neglected children? Is conforming to state standards actually improving the state?
These are big questions, and they will take a significant amount of time, study, and thought. In the meantime, I know my place is in the classroom, so I will conform to current standards within the school. Moreover, my misgivings could be completely unfounded, so I need to sit at the feet of teachers who are older and wiser than I am.
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