Professional learning includes reflective practice, engagement with the teaching community, and continuous revision of educators’ philosophy, practice, and development. The professional learning I engage in encourages me to reflect on my practice by engaging with fresh ideas and resources and asking the questions that matter, ensuring I am taking steps to being better education to their students.
Artifact #1: Live Tweet thread from Provincial Pro-D Day
Link to my Live-Tweet Thread with Kelly Gallagher here
These Live-Tweets are from a session with Kelly Gallagher during a Pro-D day I attended with the BC Teachers of English Language Arts (BCTELA). The Tweets are one example of how I like to keep records of my Pro-D learning via an accessible online platform that broadens my audience and encourages dialogue. My Tweets also keep me accountable for my learning and feels like a great way for me to consider how I can apply my learning immediately to the classroom. Kelly Gallagher’s keynote session encouraged me to be more culturally responsive in my teaching. I am encouraged to bring more of the BLM movement and Indigenous issues into my ELA classroom. I received a plethora of source ideas and materials, as well as an idea on how to lay out my unit with my students. My hope was to spend our last unit together (on the relationship between humans and society) exploring these issues, being exposed to “seeds” that provoke deep thinking, and summatively asking my students to reflect: “How did the reading change your thinking?”
Artifact #2: Direct application of Pro-D learning around inclusive assessment
Link to my Live-Tweet Thread with Laurel Pope here
This live Tweet thread shows my key learning from Laurel Pope’s session on inclusive assessment practices at the BCTELA Pro-D Day in October 2020, and I immediately sought ways to implement her advice in my practice. According to Pope, delivering courses using a thematic approach, allowing students to explore one big idea or question, sets us up to ask the question: How does my feedback allow S’s to move towards the final piece, to answer that question? The learning journey is better honoured by giving me the ability to triangulate assessment with my student through conversations, observations, and products identified along the way in the unit. I gave students multiple peer and self assessment tasks, giving them practice in the routine of reflecting on their own learning. As I move forward into my career as a teacher, I’d like to continue the practice of coming up with at least one tangible goal to implement in my teaching after the Pro-D.
Conclusion
Conferences like the BCTELA day I participated in encourage educators to reflect on their practice by engaging with fresh ideas and resources and asking the questions that matter, ensuring they are taking steps to being better educators to their students. My engagement on social media encouraged me, as I realized I had a voice within the teaching community, even as a teacher candidate. The thoughts that I was engaging with for my professional learning were valuable to others in my professional learning network, and in turn, I was also able to engage with the things they were learning on their Provincial Pro-D Day. The professional learning educators engage in allows them to step away from the notion that their practice is set-in-stone; instead, we are truly all on a lifelong learning journey with new things to learn along the way.