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Monday, May 28, 2018

EDU 6990 Reflection Six Standard 8

Med. Program Standard 2:
Standard 8: Present professional practice for the review of colleagues


Courses Aligned with Standard:
EDU 6528
EDU 6990

Original Assumptions:

From the beginning of the course I was a novice teacher with some leadership skills. I led a 
Geometry Professional Learning Community (PLC), collaborated heavily with others in my 
math department over baseline exams, awards, etc. However, I felt that I lacked the full traits 
of being considered “a leader”. Over the course of the quarter I will admit I was a bit scared 
going into this program due to a possibly extreme learning curve especially not being in the 
University Place School District (UPSD). I was thankfully surprised over the support I received 
over the time by the class facilitator, Angie Franklin, and the rest of the classmates.

Learning Experience:
Based off of the standards I learned from Seattle Pacific University’s School of Education I felt 
I gained the most in:

Standard 2: Analyze learning to promote student growth.
Standard 4:  Engage in analysis of teaching and collaborative practices.

With my district’s Danielson Framework of TPEP I found that I did use most of what I was taught in 
my classroom already. The standards included were:

         1e: Designing Coherent Instructions
         4a: Reflecting on Teaching
         4d Participating in the Professional Community
         4e Growing and Developing Professionally


    During the course of the quarter I found that an accomplished teacher always reflects on their 
practices. They are ones that look back at their lessons, see how well it went, and how to alter their 
plans for the future. In this class I found that the reflective strategies have helped. Brookhart, S. M. 
(2016) pointed out that lessons that support higher-order learning are also likely to interest and engage 
students. So I focused my time reflecting on how I could structure my lessons to interest the students. 
During the first meeting with the rest of the UPSD cohort I found the coaching session to be quite 
useful. Working with Pat Perkins during the coaching session, I wanted him to focus the time on 
methods to engage my students and an area in which I struggled was questioning and discussion 
techniques. Hintz, A., Kazemi, E. (2014) pointed out that the goal of questioning and discussion 
techniques are what the teacher can listen for, ideas to pursue, and which to highlight in the lesson. His 
years of expertise helped shape my lesson on lesson 3.2, different types of angle pairs to promote 
discussion as well as making it relevant to students. While forming the lesson plan for me to teach, his 
knowledge of English pushed me to influence more vocabulary by incorporating different strategies 
into the lessons to benefit my students learning geometry.
   After taking what my coaching partner told me I taught my lesson to my students. The overall lesson 
went well, but I knew I could have done better. Before showing it to the cohort, I wrote down different 
ways I could have improved the lesson so the class could tell me if that component would have been a 
better choice  During the second cohort session I was placed with Conrado Julian, Vanessa Oh, and 
 Cleo Hagen. We reviewed each other’s lessons and gave critiques. I was glad to have teachers who did 
not know me too well to examine my lesson and give me critiques with less of a bias. The overall 
experience was useful as they gave more ideas on how to alter my lessons to engage more students and 
more questioning techniques. York-Barr et a. (2006) found that in groups, more resources are available 
and the participants gain significant improvements with their colleagues. In the end I have synthesized 
what I learned in a paper that goes through my work on wanting to pursue leadership in education.








Reflection:
From this class I can now consider myself a more accomplished teacher and closer to my goal 
of being a leader. As I continue my future lesson planning I will make sure to influence more 
lessons that will engage students. For example, at the end of this unit that I am teaching on 
Transformations, my Geometry PLC and I will be giving the students a project I designed, 
Transformations Logo Project” as a way to demonstrate to my students how geometry is used 
in everyday life in a creative way. This was also a way to keep students engaged. As William 
noted, “ high-engagement classroom environments appear to have a significant impact on 
student achievement” (p.81). I will also keep pushing myself to look for more questioning and 
discussion techniques for my lessons. As I continue to pursue my goals I will continuously look
 back on this class as it has been beneficial to how I reflect on my instructional practices.






































Works Cited

Brookhart, S. M. (2016). Start With Higher-Order Thinking. Educational Leadership, 74(2), 10-15.

Hintz, A., Kazemi, E. (2014). Intentional Talk: How to Structure and Lead Productive Mathematical
Discussions. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.
The Danielson Group. (2013). The Framework for Teaching Evaluation Instrument 2013 Edition
Princeton, NJ: Danielson, C.

York-Barr, J., Sommers, W.A., Ghere, G.S., & Montie, J. (2006). Reflective Practice to Improve 
Schools: An Action Guide for Educators.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

William, Dylan (2011). Embedded Formative Assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

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