Professional development is an essential part of becoming an educator.

Not only is it vital

in the process of becoming an educator but it is also a critical component of staying a high

quality educator. Because of this, I intend to seek out as many professional opportunities as

possible such as joining more professional organizations as well as attending more education

related conferences. Throughout my student teaching, I have been able to attend only one

conference, Educate Georgia Summit, but I plan to take advantage of more opportunities in the

future. Along with attending more conferences, I would like to attend more professional develop

sessions, especially in regards to special education because of my minimal experience with

special needs students. As a teacher, I think it is always important to know my strengths and

weaknesses in the areas of planning, instruction, assessment, and professionalism. After

identifying my weaknesses, I can develop strategies to combat the weaknesses as I have

demonstrated in my professional development plan.

A responsibility when planning any lesson is to try to fit the needs for all the students in

that classroom because students learn best when their interests, values, and experiences are taken

into consideration (Lynch, 2001). As a teacher, I try to take into consideration what my students

will get out of the lesson. Not only do I want them to learn the material but I also want them to

be able to apply the material to their daily life. For this purpose, students need not only be

extrinsically motivated such as getting a good grade on a test but also intrinsically motivated like

coming to school with an example of what they learned the previous class with the sole purpose

of sharing the information rather than obtain some kind of grade for it (Mader, 2009). If students

are bored during my lesson then they will not take the information with them out of the

classroom. To combat boredom, I assign topics that students have an interpersonal connect to,

allow them to express their opinion on the topic, and feed their curiosity (Strong, Silver, Perini,
& Tuculescu, 2003). Helping a student thrive is essential to me. After getting a student interested

in a topic, it is important to keep them interested in a topic. What I have noticed is students stay

focused on a topic when they have an activity to go along with the topic. Because of this, I try to

incorporate several activities into a unit, especially group activities because a cooperative setting

enhances learning (Gillies, 2003). The job of an educator is not to solely teach the lesson; it is to

have students absorb the knowledge for their own use.

While I have learned how to create lesson that are engagingly beneficial to the students, I

would not have been able to do such without collaboration with my colleagues. My colleagues

are a source of knowledge when it comes to figuring out the best instructional practices. Along

with my colleagues, going to conferences and networking provides a great opportunity to gain

insight into different instructional techniques. At the Educate Georgia Summit, one of the

sessions discussed the importance of technology in the classroom. Technology helps to better

support our students because it serves as a source for not only helping us getting to know our

students but also their goals. My technology incorporation plan states various methods that I

have incorporated in my classroom to help me better understand the needs of my students. Since

technology has become a large part of society, it is our job to incorporate what is happening in

society into our classroom.

Throughout my student teaching, I have had many pitfalls such as failing to properly

explain a concept, having labs go wrong, and trouble figuring out how to make the lesson more

relatable, but I have learned that teaching is not perfect. Things do go wrong. What matters is

how I handled it afterwards. Because of my attitude towards teaching, my teachers nominated me

for the Outstanding M.A.T. Student Award (Science Education), which demonstrates my

commitment to academic achievement, teaching expertise, and excellence.

 References

Gillies, R. M. (2003). Structuring cooperative group work in classrooms. International Journal

of Educational Research, 39(1), 35-49.

Lynch, Sharon. (2001). “Science for all” is not equal to “one size fits all”: Linguistic and cultural

diversity and Science education reform. Journal of Research in Science Teaching - J

RESSCI TEACH, 38, 622-627.

Mader, C. E. (2009). “I Will never teach the old way again”: Classroom management and

external incentives. Theory into Practice, 48(2), 147–155.

Strong, R., Silver, H., Perini, M., & Tuculescu, G. (2003). Boredom and its opposite.

Educational Leadership, 24-29.