Joshua Curd

Professional Development #2

Include you 8 hours’ worth of professional development certificates with your summary.

Summary:

Part 1: List the names of the professional development sessions you completed, and the hours

earned.

- Differentiated Instruction: Maximizing the Learning of All Students, 3 hours

- Functional Behavioral Assessment: Identifying the Reasons for Problem

Behavior and Developing a Behavior Plan, 2 hours

- IEPs: Developing High-Quality Individualized Education Programs, 3 hours

Part 2: Give a brief description of each one you completed.

- Differentiated Instruction: Maximizing the Learning of All Students has us learn how to

understand the key elements of differentiated instruction, differentiate instruction based on

students’ readiness level, interests, and learning needs, differentiate instruction for three main

instructional components: content, process, and product, evaluate and grade differentiated

products, prepare your students and your classroom for differentiated instruction, and take the

first steps toward implementing differentiated instruction.

Joshua Curd
Professional Development #2

- Functional Behavioral Assessment: Identifying the Reasons for Problem Behavior and Developing

a Behavior Plan has us learn how to identify the function of problem behaviors, design individual

behavior plans based on the functions of problem behaviors, and Implement and evaluate

individualized behavior plans.

- IEPs: Developing High-Quality Individualized Education Programs has us learn how to identify

the purpose and components of a high-quality IEP, understand key procedural and substantive

requirements of a high-quality IEP, recognize the most common procedural and substantive

errors made by IEP teams, describe how an individualized, high-quality IEP is developed around

the unique needs of each student, identify the elements of a high-quality PLAAFP statement,

explain how to develop challenging, ambitious, and measurable goals, identify the elements that

should be included in a statement of the individualized services and supports to be provided to a

student, and explain the importance of documenting a student’s progress toward meeting his or

her IEP goals and reporting that progress to parents.

Part 3: What insights have you gained by completing theses professional development

opportunities? How does this information relate to our course content?

-One of the bigger things I was able to gleam from my 8 hours of development is a better

understanding of the processes that go into qualifying for special education assistance and how

the student is tested to determine his or her eligibility for assistance. Another big thing that I

was able to pick up from these developments was how to properly come up with strategies for

instruction in a differentiated classroom. This is crucial because of how often there are going to

be students that generally are not receptive to a teacher’s normal way of instructing the class
Joshua Curd
Professional Development #2

and it is up to the teacher and associated support staff to implement different strategies that

help students that would otherwise not do well in the normal classroom setting. This doesn’t

even need to apply to only students with a disability but even regular students that learn better

in a different way. Another thing I was able to learn from the developments that I viewed was a

quite a few effective ways to manage behavioral problems that can occur in students in the

classroom. For example; if you have punished a student in a certain way it may actually be what

they had wanted in the first way and will likely reinforce their behavior so that they’ll act up

again. Say a young girl doesn’t want to go to lunch due to a few other girls that she eats lunch

with have been mean to her and she doesn’t want to be near them at the time. On her way out

of the classroom she trips and begins to purposely swear in rapid succession to get you to

punish her, and without knowledge of why she wanted to get in trouble you send to lunch

detention away from the other students, exactly what she wanted. In this case, you have

actually reinforced her bad behavior rather than deter her from doing it again which will lead to

further problems.
Joshua Curd
Professional Development #2
Joshua Curd
Professional Development #2
Joshua Curd
Professional Development #2
Joshua Curd
Professional Development #2
Joshua Curd
Professional Development #2