For Competency 5: Engage in Professional Development, I am going to use a training I attended

this summer that was put on by the M. A. Rooney Foundation to demonstrate my disposition for
life-long learning and professional development. This two week training consisted of a
combination of virtual classes via Zoom, independent study with associated quizzes, and
recorded demonstrations. The emphasis of the course was a phonics program called the Orton-
Gillingham Approach that is used to assist students with reading, spelling, and writing
difficulties. As an EL teacher I found that I needed to learn more about the structure and rules of

how to use the language, but understanding why is helping me teach in a way that my students
can make connections and gain a deeper understanding. As part of the program I have an
extensive amount of online resources including access to videos of the program in use in
classrooms. Moving forward I will utilize these resources to help me continue to improve my
proficiency in order to assist my students in their language learning journey.
The artifact I am attaching is a PDF of the certificate of completion. The hours reflected only
account for the virtual Zoom portion of the course.