Standard 5B: Professional Development, Partnerships and Advocacy
The artifacts I chose for Standard 5B come from a variety of places. These artifacts encompass three of the most important influences to my development as a teacher in the past two years. Professional developments and partnerships with co-teachers and administration gave me the confidence and space to advocate for the English Language Learners at my school.
Professional developments complimented and provided additional strategies to those that I learned in graduate school. The most significant of these professional developments came early in 2018 through Fordham University. In my resume one can see a short description of this under the Professional Development heading.
Writing is Thinking through Strategic Inquiry gave me a strong foundation of skills to base my writing instruction on. I ended up basing my entire after school program on these strategies and almost immediately saw improvements in ELL writing. With this, I brought these strategies, which are based on Judith Hochman’s Writing Revolution, and delivered a professional development to my school staff to spread the WITsi gospel.
My coworkers’ willingness to listen and incorporate fresh ideas into our curriculum gives me the space to come to them with new ideas without the fear of ridicule. This partnership is exemplified by my 7th grade team’s meeting notes in which the collaboration between my coworkers and I can be seen in writing. This is an integral part of what makes my school a productive, safe environment and it is a must for an ENL teacher who is expected to co-plan with eight others.
My co-teachers and I work together to create nearly everything. We follow the four step co-teaching cycle outlined in my paper on co-teaching. This allows us to create documents for parents and students that provide a yearlong outlook, so they know what to expect and how to prepare.
These documents demonstrate a willingness to reach beyond the school and into the community of my students. In school, I am inspired by the opportunity to teach with so many collaborators. Their willingness to try proven strategies is all to uncommon from what I have heard from other ENL instructors. I have been lucky to learn so much from professional developments and partnerships with incredible people who truly listen when I advocate for the ELLs socially and politically.
