Professional Development Goals

Short Term Professional Goals

            My immediate professional goal is to complete my master’s degree.  Since the first professional development workshop that I attended I have been in love with technology and how it related to what goes on in the classroom. Thirteen years ago I stood alone at my school with the wild dreams of wanting to use technology in my classroom everyday. It has always been my goal to get my master’s but never quite had the peace about what type of focus I wanted to commit to until the past few years. A master’s with a focus on technology integration was an answer to that lingering question. Core proposition two states “Teachers Know the Subjects They Teach and How to Teach Those Subjects to Students”. I understand now how technology opens the doors to all students, no matter their learning style or intelligence. Being able to understand differentiated instruction and how it relates to technology puts me in full control of my knowledge and how to share that with students. I expect to achieve this goal by August of this year.

            Another short term goal is to develop lesson plans for next year’s history curriculum to integrate reading and technology. Core Proposition 4 states, “Teachers Think Systematically About Their Practice and Learn from Experience”. A growing issue has plagued me for years, and has more than one time sucked the joy out of my teaching experience, that is the ever increasing amount of “required” things I must teach in a day. I have trusted educators that I highly respect that have adjusted their curriculum to accommodate this issue that I daily consult with to understand how they meet the requirements and still have fun teaching and make learning fun. The goal I want to meet by August is to have a program set up that will allow me to teach reading while learning about Alabama history, which includes using productivity tools to satisfy our technology course of study. I have already begun the steps to achieve this goal by gathering all the history, reading, and technology objectives that need to be met and drawing out a calendar for next school year and penciling in a timeline to meet the objectives.

            I also plan to organize my computer, placing documents and relevant websites into folders for quicker retrieval. Core proposition three states, “Teachers are Responsible for Managing and Monitoring Student Learning”. One of my weak points is that I feel I waste valuable learning time trying to locate documents that should be right at my finger tips. For instance, a website that I use every year that I have bookmarked is buried in many bookmarks that I have on my computer that I save because of their relevance to subjects I teach. More engaging learning time would be accomplished in my classroom if my computer files were better organized and named according to state objectives and classroom units. I plan to have this organized desktop in place by August of this year in order to begin the school year off right.

Long Term Professional Goals

            My most important long term goal is to obtain National Boards certification. Having the opportunity to complete my master’s degree has inspired me to try something I have never had the confidence to try which is applying for National Boards certification. This relates to core proposition five which states, “Teachers are Members of Learning Communities”. I have already found a cohort to join me in this endeavor. My next step is to apply for a grant from my state education department to help in the costs of this. I have set a one year time frame on this beginning in August of this year after I complete my degree.

            Since my passion with technology began I have always tried to find ways to share this with other teachers. I hope that this master’s degree will open doors for me into a position of technology mentor. Core proposition five states, Teachers are Members of Learning Communities”. I dream of being able to go into teachers’ classrooms and show them how to integrate technology into lessons they have taught for years. I want to ignite the flame of passion in them that I have for technology integration and spark new creativity into their classrooms.

            Another long term professional goal I have is to facilitate online professional development courses. This again relates to core proposition five. I have had a taste of facilitating an online course last summer and was so very sad to see the time end. I enjoyed sharing my experiences but most importantly seeing teachers who were once afraid of technology grow to love it and see their creativity through there work samples.