Final Reflection on Teacher Professional Goals

My personal growth goal was to spend more time creating lesson plans that will help make my lessons fun and engaging. I wanted to create a learning environment where I could utilize more active learning strategies and more technology in the classroom. My professional growth goal was to check for understanding before moving on to another topic, and to utilize higher level thinking activities.

I have been successful in both my personal and professional growth goals. I created a lesson plan that allowed my Economics class to understand the role of competition in businesses. I split them into groups and I gave them two sales ads to similar stores to compare. For example, one group had Target and Wal-Mart, one group had Conn’s and Best Buy and the other group had CVS and Walgreen’s. They were asked to create a chart to represent a particular product and write the price down from each sales ad. Then after about 15 minutes of working I had the class present what they had discovered. They had to tell the class the prices and tell us which store had the better price on that product. In my professional goal I have a wait time where I ask my students questions to ensure that they understood the lesson. At the closing of class I review them of what we learned during the class period. Depending on their involvement, sometimes I make the review their “ticket” out of class.

My personal growth measureable activities were to sit down and take time to think about my lesson plans instead of just writing down assignments. I also wanted to collaborate with my peers on other suggestions on how to make my lessons more active. My professional growth measureable goal was to quiz my students over the material we just learned to check for understanding.

I have been successful in these goals because I have been able to take time to involve more in my lessons than just book work. When I was teaching my World Geography class about West Africa I created a slideshow of pictures. My husband had visited Ghana 2 years ago and I wanted my students to get a better understanding of the living conditions of Africa. So I decided to integrate technology in presenting West Africa. I hooked my laptop up to a portable projector and I showed my class the slides of his trip to Ghana. My students were amazed about seeing pictures of Ghana. When we read about it in the textbook my students weren’t able to grasp the condition to Ghana. After seeing the slides they were able to see the transportation used in Africa, diseases infecting the citizens of Ghana, and glimpses of their living conditions and economy. My students now remember more about Ghana from the slideshow than any other country we studied the whole year.

My personal growth assessment and evaluation goal was to keep my students engaged and excited during the duration of the class time. My professional growth assessment was to attend workshops and classes that would help me become a better teacher and to understand my students better. My students had enjoyed the new lessons that I created and I have taken Pay for Knowledge classes that have helped me understand my students. I have taken book studies such as A Framework for Understanding Poverty, and Queen Bees & Wannabes. The poverty class really helped me understand what types of environments my students live in and why they act the way they do in class. I feel that I learned so much about my students and I have been able to relate to them better which has also made teaching them more fun.