Professional Competency 11
Professional competency 11 deals with committing to your own professional development and to the profession as a teacher. The teaching profession, education, and the world itself is continuously evolving and changing. As such, teachers need to continue to grow and develop alongside the profession to provide students with the best and most inclusive education possible.
My development
I believe that, as a someone who is still in the early stages of development as a teacher, I have much to learn and, my commitment to providing my students with the best possible education will make it so that I never stop growing and learning. I understand how important it is to continuously focus on learning new information about the world, education and practices. Other than throughout my courses, I have had opportunities to attend workshops, conferences and school meetings that have helped me in my growth which has in turn helped me in providing my students with a safe learning environment.
This said, I believe that I am at an “acceptable” level of mastery for this competency since I understand that, as a newly graduating and new teacher, I still have so very much to learn and that my teacher education will never be finalized.
Artifacts
Throughout my program, I have made an effort to attend non mandatory conferences and workshops as I truly see value in learning more and informing myself on new practices and strategies. I attended a workshop called “Success in the online classroom” as covid has forced us into a world of teaching that is uncharted territory for most of us. Having had little experience with teaching online and not knowing many strategies to help my students succeed when having to stare at a screen from home all day. This workshop gave me ideas of ways to help my students and to make virtual teaching as educational and interesting as possible. Along with this, I also attended a workshop called the “Teacher’s Sex-Ed Toolkit”. I understand the importance in knowing as much as possible about what it is that my students could be going through with regards to sex, gender identity and expression and how to act/respond as a teacher. I truly want to create the most inclusive and accepting environment as possible for all my students, regardless of what it is that they may be going through. Teacher specific sexual education is therefore very important for me to know about and understand as sex ed is something that is constantly changing and evolving.
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During my time at McGill, I attended the SPEAQ on campus conference twice. The above document is an analysis of two workshops that I attended during the SPEAQ on campus in 2020. This gave me the opportunity to attend workshops and lectures to learn more about what is new and in development in my specific field of English as a second language. This is an event that I would like to continue attending as it provides me with more knowledge and clarifies certain things that I may not have thought of without it.
In continuing to develop as an ESL specialist, I have joined several ESL groups on Facebook. These groups provide me with a space to learn, develop, and share new strategies and practices in the second language field.
