Passionate educator. Tech Whiz. Lifelong Learner.
What Lies Ahead: Lifelong Goals
As an educator, one of the many qualities I have is the willingness to continue to learn, to be a lifelong learner. I continue to learn not only about the subject matter I teach to my students, but also new teaching practices and resources to support all learners. As my time as a graduate student comes to a close, a new door is opening, as I am continuing my graduate studies in the Master of Arts in Educational Technology Program. Like I said, I am a lifelong learner. There are no limits for learning!
When thinking about what lies ahead, I think of three goals. First, I want to work on enhancing my Professional Learning Community (PLC). Second, I want to grow as a leader through various leadership opportunities. Lastly, I want to improve on creating high quality, engaging, and relevant content that fosters students to understand the knowledge learned in the classroom and to be able to utilize it in the real world.
Goal 1:
Professional
Learning Community
An important group of people who will help me continue to succeed in and outside of the classroom is a Professional Learning Community or PLC. Each year I teach, I gain new members of my PLC. Whether they are a part of my grade level or a specialized person (e.g., special education teacher, school psychologist, departmentalized teacher, etc.), they each bring a set of skills and different levels of expertise that will help me support my students and myself in the classroom.
One goal I want to work on is enhancing my PLC. As I move to a new grade level and a new school, it will be very important for me to add new people to my PLC who will share their expertise on teaching practices and be able to support me in this new adventure.
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Thankfully, I am still continuing my education, but once I am finished with my graduate program, I will need to continue to build my PLC community. I will need to build one not only to enhance my practices but also help me obtain more knowledge about certain topics. Through one of my graduate courses, I have found that Twitter is a very useful online resource to find the latest trends, practices, and issues on education. It is a resource that is easily accessible and is very specific to the viewer. You can follow various educators and education resources with a simple click. It is a great way to even converse with educators on certain topics, which strengthens my goal to enhance my PLC.
My second goal is to grow as a leader through various leadership opportunities. This year, I decided to be a part of some leadership opportunities in my school. I was a representative for my school, helping to raise money for the United Way campaign funding for scholarships for our high school seniors. I also became the middle school volleyball coach this spring season.
While these experiences were great, I want to participate in leadership opportunities that will showcase my teaching skills. One great opportunity to showcase my leadership skills along with my knowledge of teaching practices is becoming a peer mentor in my district. The Peer Mentoring Program supports new teachers in the district or new to teaching with observations and giving immediate feedback, having engaging conversations, and participating in monthly meetings to expand teaching practices. In the future, I would love to facilitate and plan professional development sessions to present throughout my district, which is another excellent leadership opportunity. These are baby steps in getting my foot in the door of new leadership opportunities.
Goal 2:
Leadership
Opportunities
Goal 3:
Meaningful Learning
to Utilize in the
Real World
My last goal is one that has made me think about my teaching practices and how I can improve them to support all learners. I want to be able to improve on creating high quality, engaging, and relevant content that fosters students to understand the knowledge learned in the classroom. Not only that, I want students to utilize that knowledge in the real world.
After taking one of my graduate courses, I learned that as a learner, you cannot just soak in the knowledge and just put it aside. It needs to be understood and applied to other contexts. I want to make sure the content I teach my students will be useful for them to utilize in the real world. I learned the importance of in-school learning and out-of-school learning: that we want students to fully understand and apply what they learn in the classroom to the real world.
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This goal can be challenging to achieve because the amount of planning time, finding the balance of teacher and student control in the classroom, and implementing the lesson without experiencing issues. Among those issues are knowing where to begin to make it an effective lesson for the students and yourself. I plan to read Authentic Learning: Real-World Experiences That Build 21st-Century Skills to help achieve this goal. In this book are different strategies to allow students to have authentic learning experiences in the classroom and gives educators advice in order to create an authentic classroom.
I am very excited and nervous about these goals. They are ones that are pushing me out of my comfort zone but are ones that can be reached. I hope once I achieve these goals, I can set new goals that push me even more to bettering myself as a teacher, a leader, and a learner.