Professional Plan

While working as the Youth Minister at a Catholic Church, I have been able to utilize much of what I learned during Student Teaching. I work with middle and high school students teaching a youth group for each group as well as a Confirmation class for high school sophomores., Currently I am in a Youth Ministry Certificate Program in order to broaden m y education pertaining to Youth Ministry and working with youth in the Church.

Also, to further educate myself, I am in my first year of the Special Education Masters Program at Adams State College. Because classrooms, as well as youth groups, are increasingly diverse culture as well as learning styles and needs, I feel that this program is not only educating me about this population of students, but will also help me to more fully understand the learning styles of all of my students.

The Student Teaching process taught me a great deal about what it truly means to become a successful teacher. While it was never made clear to me that teachers need to expose themselves to new and innovative teaching methods and curriculums, teaching at Arvada High School has shown me the constant reflection and professional development that goes into becoming an effective teacher in the classroom.

Every Thursday morning the departments at AHS meet and have professional development meetings for an hour and a half before class starts. The meetings go over intervention plans, creating common assessments, discussing relevance of our curriculums and determining what steps need to be taken to ensure the success of the students in the future. The Jefferson County district, as well as others I assume, have very extensive workshops and classes that are constantly offered for professional development to take place. I plan, once I begin teaching, to continue participating in these workshops and classes to ensure that I am teaching as best I can to all of my students.

Over the course of my student teaching, I have noticed growth due to the fact that I am constantly asking questions to my mentor teachers and looking for different ways that they have handled differentiation, classroom management and even grading. It has been very rewarding for me to gain such insight from the veteran teachers in and outside of the building.

Differentiation was where I had the most difficulty throughout my student teaching experience and because of this, I hope to be able to utilize colleagues as well as the workshops in order to gain insight on differentiation. I know that all of my students will always be able to succeed if I do a good job of changing my instruction each of the to be able to learn.

While I recognize that there is still much for me to learn, I look forward to utilizing the teachers and staff members as wealths of knowledge to continue my learning of how to be a successful teacher.