Professional Development: A Comprehensive Guide for Effective Teaching

1. Chapter 10 Professional Development: A Continuing Process

2. Chapter Focus • This chapter addresses the assessment and continued development of the effectiveness of teachers as they continue throughout their career.

3. Beginning your teaching experience • You will be nervous and make mistakes, it is to be expected • You will have many questions about your student teaching practicum, such as will the cooperating teacher like me or will the students accept me? • Be prepared. Study, plan, practice and reflect. • Make a good first impression • Become knowledgeable about the school and its surroundings • Discuss your responsibilities and familiarize yourself with the lessons

4. Cooperating teacher’s perspective • Assist the student teacher when necessary, provide guidance • Get to know your student teacher and resolve any personality clashes • The student teacher may be much different than the cooperating teacher in both appearance and style of teaching. Be slow to judge. • Be aware of student teacher having another job while student teaching

5. Supervisor observing student teacher • Before an observation, plan to demonstrate your best skills • Decorate the room and bulletin boards with student work • Organize your work area

6. Clinical Supervision • Clinical supervision is based on shared decision making between the university supervisor and the teacher and focused on improving, rather than evaluating, teaching behaviors. • Triad is composed of you, your cooperating teacher, and the university supervisor. • Includes PREobservation conference, observation of teaching, and a POSTobservation conference. • Pre: the triad meets to discuss goals, objectives, and the evaluation process. • During observation: Supervisor collects data on students’ performance of objectives and on teacher performance of the teaching strategies • Post: the triad discusses the performances

7. Finding a teaching position • Get letters of recommendation from cooperating teachers and principals. • Keep portfolio and resume up to date • Hone your interview skills • Establish contacts with: college placement offices, local school district offices, county educational agency, state departments of education, professional journals and independent schools

8. Professional Resume • No more than two pages, neat, standard 8.5x11 size, on resume paper. • No personal information such as age, height, weight, marital status, etc • Organize in order: name, address, phone number and then educational data, then professional experience-most recent placed first. • Be truthful and take time to develop your resume • Prepare a cover letter for your resume • Have resume proofread and get it to the personnel director by the deadline.

9. Professional Development • Through self-assessment…maintain a professional journal, logbook and research log. • Through mentoring… peer coaching and mentor teacher volunteerism • Through in-service and graduate study…workshops and programs to keep teachers up to date on their practice. • Through participation in professional organizations…National Teachers Association, American Culinary Federation, etc • Through communications with teachers…visiting other teachers, graduate seminars, study groups. • Through off-teaching work experience…short term employment as teachers in private industry, research institutes, etc • Through micro peer teaching...what is it?

10. Professional Development(cont) • Micro peer teaching, MPT, is a skill-development strategy used for professional development by teachers. • It is a scaled down teaching experience involving: • Limited objective • Brief interval for teaching a lesson • Lesson taught to a few (8-10) peers (as your students) • Lesson focuses on the use of one or several instructional strategies • It is a predictor of later teaching effectiveness • MPT is evaluated on: teacher preparedness and implementation of lesson • Student involvement • Whether objectives were met • Cognitive level appropriateness of lesson

11. Summary This chapter’s main focus was on professional development and the continuing process of honing and improving your teaching skills.