This evidence piece for TRB Standard 8, “Educators contribute to the profession,” is both a letter of reference and a personal letter of thanks from the general director of the last school at which I worked. The letters describe how I have held TRB Standard 8 true throughout my most recent experience in education by contributing the expertise I had at the time to the various activities at the school, as well as supporting our team in professional development. From January 2015 to December 2016 I worked in administration at Colegio Americano del Sur (CAS), an American international school in Guatemala. The two years I spent at this school provided me with an incredible learning opportunity and gave me a great deal of confidence in my ability to adapt quickly to new circumstances and responsibilities. This experience also gave me the opportunity to research and try-out different professional development practices, with which, as TRB Standard 8 advocates, I could help contribute to the profession.
As the letter of recommendation states, I worked with teachers to better understand the areas in which they had interest to grow. I used this information to help develop workshops for our PD days, as well as to work with teachers individually on their Personal Growth Goals (PGGs) and their Student Learning Objectives (SLOs). Each teacher made goals at the beginning of the year, a PGG for personal well-being and two SLOs for student growth. The SLOs were completed in an action research format, and I was able to use the research skills I had learned while completing my M.Ed. to help teachers design their research and action methods. As TRB Standard 8 affirms, educators should support, mentor and encourage other educators. I provided workshops to help teachers better understand the data from our students’ MAP (Measure of Academic Progress) results, which allowed teachers to identify and target areas of concern in our math, English and Spanish classes and to develop strategies to address them. As the letter of thanks describes, I also started a student-driven community outreach project with a group of grade 11 students. Through classroom and staff presentations, I was able to gain the interest of other students and teachers to start similar projects. Because my role changed in my second year at CAS, I handed my project over to a new teacher and was able to mentor him, as he facilitated the project in 2016. In my second year at CAS, I set up a peer observation PD programme for teachers and auxiliary support staff. I believe that one of the best resources educators have for PD is each other. I asked each staff member to allow me to cover one of their classes each semester so that they could go observe another teacher from whom they wanted to learn. Each educator has unique ideas and strengths. With respect to TRB Standard 8, I learned that if given the opportunity and time, educators are enthusiastic about supporting and learning from one another. |
This evidence piece for TRB Standard 8 is a recorded version of a tech presentation about NewsELA.com, which I originally presented in class. We were asked to share a classroom technology with our peers that may be useful in our teaching career. As I did not have a chance to present the features, uses and benefits of NewsELA.com to all of my classmates, I decided to make this video.
There are so many online tech tools available to teachers, but it can sometimes feel overwhelming to research which ones will really help us increase engagement in the classroom. Sometimes it helps |
|