Online Assignment #1 - Kate Kristian

My 3 professional growth goals relate directly to my current stage of professional development, which I believe is the professional teacher phase. As I reflect on my 6th year of teaching, I feel that I have made that shift from personal concerns such as being accepted by colleagues, juggling all teacher responsibilities, and being able to handle adverse situations to concerns of my students specifically. My energy is more focused on how to best deliver my instruction to ensure that my students are making adequate progress, and all of my students are performing to the best of their abilities. Within the Seattle School District, I’m provided with numerous opportunities to further my professional growth in most subject areas, and while I may have looked at this information and new learning as overwhelming in the novice phase, I know have the experience and confidence that allows me to determine how it will work in my classroom, with my students.

My professional growth goals reflect my focus on students behavior and learning and include:
1. To use a variety of assessment strategies and data to monitor and improve instruction.
2. To integrate technology into instruction and assessment.
3. To inform, involve, and collaborate with families and community members as partners in each student’s educational process, including using information about student achievement and performance.

Assessment
At this time, I am using a variety of effective assessment tools with my students. My students are assessed formally and informally, and in different formats. I also use summative and formative types of assessment. However, my students are not regularly using their work to examine and reflect on their achievement of learning targets. I am not providing students with many opportunities to reflect on their learning deeply. As a teacher in the professional phase, I am focused on using student assessment to drive my instruction. My hope is that my students will have a better understanding of the assessment process in general, and that they will have gained skills in self-monitoring, evaluation, and regulation.

Technology
Due to the limited opportunities that my students currently have to learn using the available technology in my school, I have chosen this goal. Given the proper training and guidance, I hope my students will be able to view technology as a tool that can aid their learning in a particular content area. Specifically, I want my students to be fluent in logging on and off our classroom computers, accessing appropriate websites to further their knowledge and/or experience on a particular subject, and to understand how to use these tools responsibly.

Parent and Community Involvement
At the end of my professional growth, my hope is that parents will have better understanding of how their child is performing in all areas including academics and social and emotional development through regular communication and feedback. As students are becoming more aware of their progress through self-monitoring, evaluation, and regulation, I want to include them in this process. I currently use a wide range of assessment methods in order to gather information on my each of my students’ progress. However, I have yet to determine an effective way of passing along the information to parents and community members.

Because my teaching and learning plan is focused on Literacy, it will only help in making assessment, technology, and parent and community involvement stronger in reading and writing.