TPGP

Teacher Professional Growth Plan

My second year of the education program has really opened my eyes to what aspects of my profession can be improved upon as I begin my teaching career. Many of these topics I have begun to work on, either during student-teaching or in the university classroom.

Assessment

It was a great learning experience to design rubrics during the great task and the student inquiry project in my final semester. I would like to take these skills further in my planning for assessment.

Goal: Continue to focus on planning ahead for assessment

Objectives to track progress:

• start unit planning by defining what I want my students to know at the end
• build assessment rubrics while designing student projects
• ensure that assessment is for learning as well as of learning

Goal: Continue to focus on rubric use for assessment

Objectives to track progress:

• search for good rubrics using tools such as IO
• develop rubrics myself and with my classes
• focus on clear, well articulated criteria for rubrics
• incorporate self and peer assessment of student work using rubrics

Goal: Design an effective record-keeping program to track student progress

Objectives to track progress:

• develop a spreadsheet with spaces for both grades and notes on student progress
• begin making daily notes on student progress
• refer to notes when discussing student progress with students and parents

Collaboration:

The importance of collaborating with classmates has been a recurring theme during my degree. I would like to continue collaborating with colleagues to better my practice.

Goal: Collaborate with other staff members to improve my teaching practice.

Objectives to track progress:

• renew subscription to ATA science council to keep up with current educational ideas in science
• show my unit/lesson plans to colleagues and ask for feedback
• ask to observe colleagues’ classes
• take questions I have about my practice to curriculum leaders and administration

Inquiry:

The potential educational benefits of inquiry-based learning have been emphasized during my program. With newfound confidence in developing inquiry projects based on designing projects in my final semester in Intelligence Online (IO), I hope to take this type of learning into my future classroom.

Goal: Develop inquiry-based science projects

Objectives to track progress:

• plan at least one inquiry-based task for students each course/semester
• continue working in IO to design authentic tasks
• meet with other teachers to discuss the possibility of cross-curricular projects

Classroom Structure/Atmosphere

Even within inquiry-based learning it is important to have structure and routine in the classroom setting to help student focus on their work.

Goal: Develop effective classroom routines that promote a comfortable learning environment

Objectives to track progress:

• develop a daily structure in my classroom so that students know what they are supposed to do when they enter each day
• get to know students as learners and individuals
• promote routines that help students collaborate effectively

Inquiring Independently

A discovery that I made while working on my independent inquiry is that it takes a long time to research an educational topic. Reading up on all the background and current information takes time. This made me realize that its a good thing I had the chance to investigate many issues in education during my degree, because it will be hard to find time to do it as a teacher.

The topic of my independent inquiry was investigating the gender gap in technology education. I realized through this inquiry that I have some personal biases when it comes to technology. I have become used to deferring to the men in my life when I have technology problems. Even examining this habit will be helpful as a teacher, because as I learned through my research the relationship I have with technology will likely affect my students. I was also surprised to learn how many embedded gender-related messages can be present in today’s technology such as video games.

The big revelation from my study was that one of the best, most inclusive ways to teach students to use technology is to do exactly what we have been learning about in our Technology and Inquiry class: design tasks where students are using technology in an engaging and authentic way. I learned that context is one of the most important things in making technology inclusive for all. It’s convenient, because I really like the type of teaching we have been talking about all semester. I am excited to teach using great inquiry projects with technology embedded in them. Now I have one more reason that this is a great way to teach. As a beginning teacher, I am always looking for the proof to justify what I am going to be doing in the classroom so that I can speak to parents and other educators about it eloquently. That’s the nice thing about the independent inquiry: it gives me that experience in communicating why I think inquiry based teaching is a good idea.

The Big One: The IO Unit

The idea of planning an entire unit, especially one that is supposed to take up 40% of the time spent in Biology 30, at first seemed like a huge feat. It surprised me how easily the ideas started to flow once we had a task in mind. Planning a unit that incorporates both inquiry and technology in an authentic way is certainly easier with IO. There, I said it, I’m a total convert!

Looking back, the reason the unit inquiry flowed so well was because of the way IO lays things out. It is much easier to incorporate technology and inquiry when you are starting with key understandings and a great task. It really answers the big question of “what do I need the students to be able to do” or “what do I really want the students to remember” as a result of this unit. Once that has been defined, the steps for getting there can be decided upon. It is effective to look at the end task and break it down into more manageable pieces such as smaller tasks for the students to do along the way. Once we had been working on that for a while, we realized that we had almost planned the day to day activities for an entire unit, and it was fun as opposed to painful.

Collaborating on a project such as this one has many benefits. One of my favorite things was working in IO for a while, getting tired or running out of ideas, and then logging in later to find that my partner had been working on it too. His contributions would re-inspire me and give me more ideas. The project definitely took a different shape than if I had done it alone. I work more systematically, and when collaborating you have to be flexible to let things develop. I think in the end it was definitely a richer project as a result of the collaboration.

A big question to consider is: how do we know that technology was incorporated in a meaningful way in our unit? In our project, I see technology being used in several ways. One way students would use technology is in their research. The weekly discussions would push students to find information that will be most current on the internet while encouraging them to look critically at their sources. The website itself is very important because in constructing it students will look at how persuasive advertising is used in science. Many websites out there use scientific words (or scientific-sounding words) to lure the layman in. I find this exceptionally dangerous when it comes to health-related products. My hope would be that in the process of constructing this website, students will be de-constructing what they see in internet media and become more conscious consumers. This will not necessarily happen on its own, which is why an activity based on evaluating medical websites was included. I also believe that internet advertising is incredibly important now, and will be in the future. It is the most common method of advertising for biotechnology and health-related products, so the task of developing a website is true to the profession.

Reflecting back on the project, I think that we did a lot of things well. We were able to clearly define the key understandings that our students should take away, and our project incorporates the controversy and relevance to society that make it really interesting. My one wish is just that we had gone even more in depth with our planning. I think that we laid out our expectations for the website very well, and we worked hard on what the assessment criteria would be. In laying out our expectations for the website, it became clear how much work the students would have to do to get to the point where their understandings would be good enough to make such a website. That is how we started designing activities leading up to the website. Some of our activities have a very defined product and rubric, while others are still just a concept. This was mentioned in our peer feedback, and came as no surprise. My vision for the unit, if I were to continue planning it, would be that the activities for inquiring into genetics would fall under four categories that would each have their own assessment rubric: researched discussions followed by journalling or blogging (already in the unit), experiments/activities that help students inquire into the concepts (we had one example of this with the Mendelian genetics, but there could be more), modeling of the concepts with physical or digital models (already in the unit), and the great task website. This way there would be ample time for students to get used to the format of assessment and assess their own progress on labs and discussions as the unit progressed. This way there also wouldn’t have to be a separate rubric for each topic/activity.

The peer feedback was very helpful in opening our eyes to other possibilities. One of the most interesting comments we received was regarding the final product. It was mentioned that perhaps we should give more options to express the final product than just a website. I thought about this, but I am still happy with the decision to make it a website based on my earlier rant about internet literacy.

This project really helped me to achieve my professional goals as well as opening my eyes to how important lifelong learning is as a teacher. I was able to plan using technology in a way that is interesting and authentic. I was able to continue to work on assessment. This is what I believe to be so important, especially as I see how much it helps students succeed when they understand the assessment criteria (seems like a no-brainer, but it really seems to be an under-utilized concept in education). I am looking forward to improving my assessment practices over time as I see how effective my rubrics and feedback loops are in real life.

I believe that the future for this project is bright. I think that it can definitely be used for a Biology 30 or Science 30 class, and could be adapted for other science courses as well. It will need a bit of tweaking in order to get it totally ready for the classroom, and it will likely get some more tweaking after its first run with real students. But that's teaching!