r 25) Professional Self-Assessment Form 2 ‘Teacher Candidate's Name: __Jordan Canty Date: _11/48/45 Mentor Teacher's Name: Mrs. Chedra Anthony School: Whittaker Elementary Grade Level (s)/Subject Area(s) _3"° grade: Math, ELA, Social Studies, Science Instructions to the teacher candidate: Please reflect on your professional performance, and respond to each of the following prompts. 4. Interms of the ADEPT Performance Standards, what are your professional strengths? How have you built on these strengths so far, and how do you plan to do so in the future? As for the ADEPT Performance Standards, | believe that my strengths have remained the same and ‘would consist of, APS 4: Establishing and Maintaining High Expectations for Learners, APS 6: Providing Content for Leamers, APS 7: Monitoring, Assessing, and Enhancing Learning, APS 8: Maintaining an Environment that Promotes Learning, APS 9: Managing the Classroom. | am extremely comfortable and confident with these 5 Adept Standards, and would give credit to my mentor teacher, thanks to her ability to model these Standards in her teaching | am proficient in my ability to show these standards during my instruction. APS 4: Establishing and Maintaining High Expectations for Leamers and APS 8: Maintaining an Environment that Promotes Learning are standards that | believe every educator should be able to do naturally. If you love what you're doing it will be evident in your teaching, and the students will be able to feed off of that positive energy. APS. 6, 7, and 9 are all skills that | have succeeded in by imitating Mrs. Anthony's teaching methods, and trying new things. | didn't just stick with just one method or manner of doing something; | took chances with my methods and did a trial and error with my methods. The feedback that I received from the lesson helped me decide whether | should incorporate the approaches into future lessons. Overall, | am excited that | was able to achieve this much during such a short time span, | can only imagine how much my proficiency level will increase after several years have passed, In torms of the ADEPT Performance Standards, what are your professional challenges? How do you plan to meet these challenges? In terms of the ADEPT Performance Standards | would say that the standards that have challenged me the most would be APS 1: Long-Ranged Planning, APS 2: Short-Ranged Planning, and APS 3: Planning Assessment and Using Data. Even though | am still new to teaching and running a classroom | do see that | am struggling more with the Planning components in the Performance Standards. For our student teaching we are following the lesson plans that are created by our mentor teacher, but even when creating lesson plans or assessments | have some difficulty in deciding what to include and what to omit. Creating lesson plans and assessments seemed a lot easier when doing them for required courses in college. But when It came time for creating them for my classroom, | had some difficulty because | was actually working with students that | was familiar with. I've gotten to know my students on apersonal level, so | know what type of teaching methods work for each of them, what they enjoy doing in a classroom, as well as what teaching strategies do not work with them. So for this reason | go back in forth with trying to decide what strategies | should include in a particular lesson plan and how | should go about doing it. | fee! that in order for me to improve | would need to consult with experienced educators, and lear from the information that they give me about planning, and incorporate what they tell me with what | already know. | also understand that wisdom comes with experience, so | know that if| practice something enough or work with it enough that | will eventually become proficient if not an expert with it Describe your students’ overall progress and achievement. What insights have you gained into ways to improve student progress and achievement? My class has shown some progress in their overall academic achievement; mostly in ELA (English Language Arts) and Mathematics. | would love to take credit for their improvement in those areas but my ‘mentor teacher is a phenomenal educator and with her setting that strong foundation, and me giving them extra practice and useful tricks, the students have benefited from both forms of instruction. Some things that I've realize helped when improving the students’ progress in achievement is extrinsically motivating them. One can do that my giving out awards, prizes, or treats to students who reach a certain level of achievement, or have shown some type of progress in a content. Although the goal is to get the students to eventually be intrinsically motivated, handing out awards every once in a while is something that can help them get to that point. I've also seen firsthand how hands on activities and visual aids can help promote student engagement in a lesson, which usually promotes to higher academic achievement. ‘Although we've discussed multiple times in former courses the importance of differentiating instructional strategies, | didn't realize the true value of changing up my strategies until actually teaching my own classroom. I've noticed a lot of educators get comfortable in one method of teaching, and their students suffer as a result. I've promised myseff that | would not be that type of teacher, because | want my students to be so involved with the lesson that they not only learn something from my instruction, but they actually have a desire to learn. 4, How will you use the knowledge you have g ed through this professional self- .ssment to promote your continuous professional growth and collaboration? am a strong believer in monitoring and adjusting teaching strategies in lessons. If | see that certain strategies are not effective with the majority of my students | will imivomit them in future lessons. There's ro point utilizing a strategy that is not favored or successful with my students. | also believe in keeping record of the types of strategies used as well as the overall feedback of how it worked with the students, By doing this teachers are able to refer back to it, to see the types of approaches that have proven to be beneficial when instructing the class. It also helps if teachers collaborate with one another to see what methods worked for their class and possibly even get some new ideas to try out with their own class. My mentor teacher Mrs. Anthony tells me all the time that ‘no teacher survives by working on their own, you must collaborate and work with other teachers to make it, You never know what another teacher has to offer.”