ILP Final Reflection Paper



Module 6 Assignment 2: ILP Final Reflection Paper

Ashley G. Odom

A00257081

ashley.odom@waldenu.edu

Walden University

EDUC 7900: Capstone

Dr. Rebekah McPherson

May 21, 2013

COEL Professional Dispositions

10A. The educator understands the central concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of the discipline(s) and can create learning experiences based on best practices that make these aspects of subject matter meaningful for students.

I believe that I have met my expectations for this professional disposition. I have shown strength by being able to create learning experiences for my students that are engaging and meaningful to them. I have also been able to grow by being able to plan better and more effectively. An area of weakness would be though I have progressed vastly in this area, I still can improve quite a bit. I’m not sure if I will ever be an expert in this area since technology continues to change like our education system does. Some areas of this program that have helped me grow in this discipline are the interactions that I have had with other students and learning about different best practices that they use within their learning environments.

I’m better able to serve my learners now because I’ve been able to see how different best practices have been successful and how to improve some that did not work out so well initially. I’ve also been able to bring new technologies into the learning environment through the program requirements in classes such as Wikis and uses of social media. The evidence that I have of this are improved teacher appraisal scores and feedback from work colleagues on how my teaching have improved from the beginning to now. I plan to look for other professional development opportunities in the area of technology that are provided in my district as well as join some technology organizations.

10B. The educator understands how students learn and develop and can provide a variety of learning opportunities adapted to diverse learners that support all students’ intellectual, social, and personal development.

I think that I have met my expectations in this disposition and that it is one where I can still improve. I understand that learners come from various backgrounds and learn in very different ways. Understanding this is a strength in itself. Another strength is knowing the areas of strength within my own learning and being to feed off of how diversity in my own learning helps me grow. With this knowledge, I can sympathize with a student who isn’t able to learn in the traditional method of paper and pencil all of the time. A weakness that I possess is that I don’t fully know how to create diverse learning experiences for multiple types of learners in a project based learning environment that focuses on the area of STEM. I am able to do so in some areas more than others.

The way that I have been able to meet this expectation from the program is mainly through the suggestions and experiences that have been shared from other students in the courses. Through our discussion postings, we have been allowed to share many of our experiences that we have had and often I gain knowledge and tips that I could bring into my own practice. These interactions and the information that I’ve been able to gain from them lets me to better serve my students. Evidence of this can been seen in my lesson plans. My planning shows that I allow students to complete projects and assignments in multiple ways to meet the diversity of my students. I plan to work on finding more ways to meet the needs of more learners within my project based STEM class. This can be done by having more collaboration with colleagues and also by finding professional development opportunities on meeting the diverse needs of learners.

10C. The educator understands and uses a variety of strategies to encourage students’ development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills.

I feel that I have exceeded my expectations in the area of developing critical thinking, problem solving and performance skills within my teaching practice. As I have become more comfortable with my curriculum, adding rigor to it has become easier and more effective. A strength that I have with this is having the ability to supplement my curriculum at my leisure and having a vast variety of resources that will allow me to do so. A weakness is that the group of students that I have is often not willing to accept the challenges that come with my course due to laziness and not wanting to be challenged.

During this program, I have been able to take many of the skills that we have learned such as working with rubrics and creating collaborative teams. Using these skills in my classroom has helped it evolve and has made the course more rigorous. I was able to better serve the students that I have since I know they’re areas of strength and can use that to help develop their critical thinking and problem solving skills. Evidence of my growth in this area can be seen when comparing student products from this year with last year’s. My students can attest to this as well since many of them were in my class last year and can tell that the level of difficulty has stepped up. Once I have completed the EdS program, I hope to be able to find some opportunities to sharpen my skills and learn more on how to encourage students to step up to the challenge of the class.

10D. The educator uses an understanding of individual and group motivation and behavior to create a learning environment that encourages positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation.

I believe that I have exceeded expectations in this disposition. The project based learning environment that I have forces my students to work in cooperative learning groups and this helps increase the social interactions and active engagement in my classroom. Some areas of strength are that we focus on teamwork early in the year and the students become accustomed to this type of environment early on in the course. Another strength is that most of the students have been going to the school together while at the campus and are used to being around each other, which helps with their interactions. A weakness is that though the students are used to being around each other, there are some who still lack motivation and are hard to connect with since they are very introversive.

I’ve been able to meet these expectations professionally by learning from last year’s outcomes and having a more positive outlook early in the school year. Having a stronger relationship with my students has allowed me to have a higher success rate with them in the areas of motivation, engagement and interaction. These factors helped me serve the students better since they have felt more comfortable with me this year than before and since I have made more of an effort to connect with newer students this year. This is evident from both my students and also from the parents of my current students. I have more communication with both groups and it has helped us have a more successful year academically and behaviorally. I hope to have as much success in these areas in the future as this year through continuing with these best practices and growing.

10E. The educator uses knowledge of effective verbal, nonverbal, and media communication techniques to foster active inquiry, collaboration, and supportive interaction in the learning environment.

I think that I have met my expectations for using various forms of communication within my learning environment. A strength that I have in this area is that I establish the importance of effective communication early on in the school year. I tend to have large classes, so we focus on being able to effectively communicate in a way that will allow learning to take place. A weakness can be found in this as well since I do have pretty large class sizes. At times this can create problems in how we all communicate in our classroom and cause ineffectiveness. Being able to communicate in various modes during the EdS program was very helpful to me meeting the disposition’s expectations.

By being able to communicate with my learners through a number of different techniques, I can help meet their needs better and also create a better learning experience with them. Better interactions, opportunities for collaboration and better overall behavior are all outcomes of having effective communication in the classroom. Evidence of this can be seen when you enter my classroom through the many systems that are already in place for communication. Upon observing my classroom, you may say a number of techniques for communication, whether it is verbal, nonverbal through clapping, etc. As time progresses, I hope to be able to gain new techniques and see how they could fit into the dynamic of my classroom as well.

10F. The educator understands and uses formal and informal strategies to evaluate and ensure the continuous intellectual, social, and physical development of the learner.

I feel that I still have some room for improvement in meeting this expectation. Some strengths that I have with assessment is that I am now more comfortable with the curriculum which helps me understand what skills the students need to have by the end of the modules or units. A weakness that I possess is that the course is majority project-based learning and your typical forms of assessment are very difficult to use. Another weakness is that I do not have another teacher or colleague on campus that teaches the same thing, so I’m only able to depend on myself with delivering the curriculum and assessments.

One area from the program that particularly helped me with assessments is being able to get more familiar with rubrics by having to use them and also having to create them. I’m able to better serve students because before I didn’t understand how you could assess effectively using rubrics, but now I understand and can pass that information on to the students. Evidence of this can be seen from observing the assessment strategies that are in my classroom and by checking the student’s comfort level with rubrics. Professionally I would like to research other methods of assessing, particularly more formative, that could be used in my project-based learning environment.

10G. The educator is a reflective practitioner who continually evaluates the effects of his/her choices and actions on others (students, parents, and other professionals in the learning community) and actively seeks out opportunities to promote positive social change and grow professionally.

I think I’ve met the expectations of promoting positive social change and growing professionally. A strength that I have in this area is the fact that many of the students that I have are very active in campus organizations that help them realize the importance of social change and making a difference. Them already knowing this makes it easier for me to push these opportunities upon them. Another strength is that I’m allowed to grow more professionally due to having a principal who is very forward thinking and encourages me to grow professionally since she understands the importance of doing so. A weakness would be that many of my sixth graders are not able to really get involved with more opportunities like the other grade levels, but changes are being made towards allowing them to be more involved which is a positive.

Many of my colleagues in this program have passed on information regarding professional organizations and publications that will help me grow professionally, many that I would’ve have known about without this program. Being able to know the effects of my actions and to grow more professionally definitely helps me better serve my learners. Being a better person and teacher will do nothing but trickle down into better instruction for my students. Evidence of this can be found by observing the interactions in my classroom and by seeing how the students are focused on not just their current grade level, but being great in the future. In the future, I hope to join some professional organizations to create more opportunities to grow professionally and I also hope to find more ways to inspire my learners to embrace more social change within their life.

10H. The educator fosters relationships with colleagues, parents, and community agencies to support students’ learning and well-being.

I feel that I have exceeded my expectations in this area. As I look back on this past school year, I can definitely say that I’ve had more interactions with colleagues, the community and particularly parents than I have had within my teaching career. A strength that I possess is that I have a very involved group of parents during this school year that are very good at communicating and supporting their students’ education. Another strength is that I am the magnet program focus teacher for my school, which draws a lot of opportunities to work with each of these entities. Currently I don’t see any weaknesses in this area that I can pinpoint.

One thing that helped me with meeting this expectation was my principal pinpointing last year that she was not able to see much interactions between myself and my colleagues or parents. I had not noticed the importance of this until she made that point and I made a dedicated effort to fix this problem during this school year. Having more positive relationships with all of these entities have provided more support and opportunities for my students and has opened many doors that would have been closed. Evidence of meeting this expectation can be seen from the growth of the STEM program that I teach. Seeing the different events and programs that we have participated in to help make our campus known for our magnet program can also show it. I plan to continue to find opportunities for our students to participate in and ways for us to get more involved with the resources in the community. I also plan to continue having the open-door policy of communicating with colleagues and parents within my program.

AECT Standards

Standard 1: Design Candidates demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to design conditions for learning by applying principles of instructional systems design, message design, instructional strategies, and learner characteristics.    

I feel that I have been able to meet expectations for this standard. One strength that I have with meeting this standard is that no one else on my campus teaching this subject. Since I am the only person teaching it and it is the magnet program at my school, I’m somewhat forced to figure out how to design the curriculum to meet my students needs. Though it is a strength since it helped me grow in this area, it was also a weakness since I wasn’t able to have much assistance with my curriculum. The EdS program helped me by allowing me to interact with colleagues that were often going through similar situations with their teaching. Being able to feed off of their experiences and gain information helped me develop skills for design within my own curriculum.

During this current school year, I have been able to get more opportunities for training from the developers of my curriculum. This has helped me in many ways and though more support would have been appreciated, I capitalized on the opportunities that were given to me was able to grow professionally. Evidence of this can be seen if you look at the lesson plans from this year and compare them to last year’s plans. The depth and complexity of the instructional strategies has definitely improved. After completing the EdS program, I plan to develop more by find more ways to improve the design of my curriculum and to also reach out to others that are teaching the same curriculum to gain instructional strategies from them.

Standard 2: Development - Candidates demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to develop instructional materials and experiences using print, audiovisual, computer-based, and integrated technologies.    

I still have some progress to make towards meeting this standard’s expectations. A strength that I have is that though I haven’t met my expectations, I have been able to make progress in the areas of print, computer-based and integrated technologies. A weakness that I have is that few opportunities to grow experience with some of these technologies, particularly audiovisual, since I have little support at my campus with technology growth. I’ve been able to gain some support with this in the EdS program since many colleagues have been able to share many resources that have worked for them.

By striving to gain more knowledge and skills in the areas of instructional materials, I will be able to better serve my learners. This will provide them with more opportunities to think critically and to develop stronger skills in the area of STEM. It will also make me more comfortable with teaching the curriculum to them. Evidence of this will be noticeable when I meet this standard by seeing more student products that incorporate technologies in all of these areas. In order to grow more professionally, I plan to find more opportunities for trainings that will allow me to grow more in the areas of technology that I am not as comfortable with.

Standard 3: Utilization - Candidates demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to use processes and resources for learning by applying principles and theories of media utilization, diffusion, implementation, and policy-making.

I do not think I have fully met all of my expectations for this standard. A strength that I have in this standard is that I have a better understanding of many of the theories that there are than I did initially. A weakness is that my level of understanding, in my opinion, should be much higher. This program has helped me because without it, I would not have gained the knowledge that I do have regarding the principles and theories that we have worked with. Working in these areas through the coursework has created an opening for me to gain more information and apply the knowledge that’s been gained.

I am better able to serve my learners since we are able to utilize the different forms of media that are available to use, many that we did not know were available initially. Evidence of more utilization can be found in my classroom by seeing the implementation of technologies and how it is diffused more in my teaching experience than it has been previously. I plan to learn more and dig deeper into the principles and theories that we’ve been exposed to and to find more ways of bringing these practices into my classroom seamlessly.

Standard 4: Management - Candidates demonstrate knowledge, skills, and dispositions to plan, organize, coordinate, and supervise instructional technology by applying principles of project, resource, delivery system, and information management.

I think that I have been able to meet this expectation, but wish that I could have been able to exceed it. A strength that I have with the management of technology is that I was formally a technology teacher and have had to take on the role of delivering and managing technology closely with another teacher for a campus. A weakness that I have currently is that we do not have a technology teacher that could assist with being able to tackle this task currently at my campus. Being able to interact with students in this program that have different roles on their campuses has been very helpful. This has allowed me many opportunities to collaborate and get insight on how to better manage technology within my career.

Being able to manage technology properly helps my students because it allows me to get them familiar and involved with resources that are of value to them. I am able to ensure that they are growing technologically and gaining information that will not only help them now, but also in the future. This is evident in my classroom since the delivery and types of technology that are used are consistent and effective. For future professional development, I would like to be able to work more with our IT specialist on campus with how he can help us with better classroom management of technology. He has to focus more on the campus as a whole, but helping us within the classroom more would be vital to the success that teachers have in their own setting.     

Standard 5: Evaluation- Candidates demonstrate knowledge, skills, and dispositions to evaluate the adequacy of instruction and learning by applying principles of problem analysis, criterion-referenced measurement, formative and summative evaluation, and long-range planning.

I feel that I have met my expectations in the area of evaluation. Being a former math and science teacher has proven to be a strength for me since the importance of evaluation is so predominant in these areas. State testing is always strongly emphasized in core subject areas, so I know of various methods of evaluation that can be used. A weakness of being a STEM teacher that has shown me some difficulty is that since this is not a state tested area currently; the forms of evaluation are more developed on a personal basis than collectively from a group like with the core subject areas. Within the program, it has been beneficial to work with others in the area of technology and to see how they use different strategies and techniques within their work place. These opportunities to collaborate and share provide learning experiences that we can each benefit from as educators in technology.

I am better able to serve my students since I can use a variety of evaluation methods to see what they have learned. I also think that being able to evaluate in assortment is vital because with state testing they become bombarded with much of the same over and over again. Evidence of this can be seen through my lesson planning where you can see the evaluation methods that are included at the ending of a module. Looking at the different evaluation methods that I have developed and noticing the diversity of each depending on the course and grade level can also show it. I plan to exercise other methods of evaluation that can be included with my project-based learning environment and to build on those that have already been put into place.

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