Online Assignment #1 - Vanessa Marfin

The unifying theme of my Professional Growth and Teaching and Learning Plans is transferring responsibility for directing and monitoring learning to students. As a special education teacher at the high school level, I will serve my students most effectively when I am able to provide them with the tools they need to monitor and improve their own learning. Because my students will always experience academic challenges but will not always have access to intense, personalized instruction, I am doing them a disservice if I continue to take responsibility for diagnosing and meeting their challenges without their active, conscious participation. The Professional Certification standards provide a sound framework for making this transition from a teacher-centered to a student-centered program. This is a highly appropriate shift for a teacher entering the professional stage of development, a stage wherein student learning drives teacher behavior (Steffy).

My first professional growth goal is Effective teaching 1(a): using instructional strategies that make learning meaningful and show positive impact on student learning. After professional growth, I hope students will be able to preview a task and select an effective approach to completing it, accessing additional instructional resources when necessary. Those instructional resources might be reteaching or modeling from me, or the use of instructional materials such as manipulatives, graphic organizers, or other devices or strategies. I would like my students to move from saying, "Let's do my math homework," to saying, "I was thinking of using a table to solve problem number 13. Can you help me set it up?" I would like students to be able to take this active approach towards learning in our learning lab environment, and also in general education classrooms. Currently, students disengage from instruction when they don't understand. My goal is for students in my program to gain the metacognitive and self-advocacy skills necessary to raise their hands and say, "Mr. Chipps, can you please demonstrate another example of that problem type?" or "Ms. Carroll, can you please help me relate this information about the Middle Ages to my own life and goals?" I hope that by explicitly demonstrating a variety of instructional techniques to students and by challenging them to actively critique my instruction and their own learning, students will become their own learning clinicians -- able to diagnose and treat breakdowns in their own evolving understanding.

My second professional growth goal is Effective teaching 1(b): using a variety of assessment strategies and data to monitor and improve instruction. I hope that after my professional growth students will be able to record data on their progress toward IEP goals and evaluate their own performance. I hope that including students in this process will improve motivation and help students to have an accurate picture of their own strengths and weaknesses. Familiarity with their IEP goals will also facilitate self-advocacy. My students currently tend to view their weaknesses in very global terms, i.e. "I am not a good reader." This only hinders their learning as their negative self-talk and learned errors interfere with the development of new skills and understanding. After my professional growth I hope for students to be able to say, when faced with a textbook reading assignment (for example), "I struggle with academic vocabulary. I need some extra time to complete this assignment so I can look up key terms before the reading."

My third goal is Effective teaching 1 (g): Informing, involving, and collaborating with families and community members as partners in each student's educational process, including using information about student achievement and performance. After my professional growth, I hope students will be able to lead their own IEP meetings, especially concerning their Individual Transition Plans. I hope students will be able to write their own post-high school goals for education and employment and that I will have become knowledgeable enough about community resources that I can offer each student at least one off-campus experience to help prepare her for her life goals.

By encouraging students to take a more active role in their educational programs, I will give up some immediate ego gratification. I will no longer be congratulated after a well-run IEP meeting or hear students say, "I need you," "You really helped me with this." But, as a professional teacher, these concerns are inconsequential. What matters is that students graduate from high school with the self-awareness and skills needed to achieve their dreams.