Professional Development

As a teacher, I plan to be a lifelong learner. Teaching will afford me a lot of different opportunities to learn, inside and outside the classroom. During my student teaching experience I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend multiple professional and staff development sessions. At the beginning of each unit my school district holds a unit preview where two senior teachers present the content and different ways of delivering it. At the unit preview I was able to attend we learned about different DI (differentiated instruction) techniques to teach students about inequalities. This professional development not only provided me with pedagogical knowledge but it also allowed me to converse with teachers at different schools. By building connections to other teachers in different schools I am able to further my teaching abilities. I was also able to attend a vertical team meeting where teachers from different grades came together and learned how their content fits into their students mathematical careers. This meeting allowed teachers to discuss the methods and vocabulary that they use in their classrooms. And how we can unify and connect topics for our students as they progress in school. During this particular meeting we decomposed an AP Calculus questions into the different parts and showed teachers how the concepts they were teaching affected later courses. This type of professional development is very important because it allows the teachers to create a unified approach so that the students have a reoccurring and consistent exposure to the mathematical concepts that they are learning. Professional development doesnt only happen at a district level but on a personal level. Personally, I plan to go back and obtain my Masters in Mathematics so that I can further my content knowledge in the subject that I feel so passionately about. By obtaining a higher degree I will be more able to share with my students the most current information about the state of mathematics. I will also be able to relate what they are learning in my classroom to the outside world.