Standard V: Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership
Teachers continuously improve their professional practice, model lifelong learning, and exhibit leadership in their school and professional community by promoting and demonstrating the effective use of digital tools and resources.
Participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning.
Exhibit leadership by demonstrating a vision of technology infusion, participating in shared decision making and community building, and developing the leadership and technology skills of others.
Evaluate and reflect on current research and professional practice on a regular basis to make effective use of existing and emerging digital tools and resources in support of student
Contribute to the effectiveness, vitality, and self-renewal of the teaching profession and of their school and community.
Reflection:
The efficiency of professional development relies on how closely teachers design, schedule, and execute it. There's no replacement for strict thinking and execution. “Teacher leadership is the process by which teachers, individually or collectively; influence their colleagues, principals, and other members of the school community to improve teaching and learning practices with the aim of increased student learning and achievement.” (York-Barr & Duke, 2004). To develop, practice and demonstrate professional growth and leadership, instructors should participate in article writing, course designing, represent seminars and meetings to gain more experience for their professional career. Since I'm still not a professional teacher, dedicating to create course materials and basic paper writing engaged me to the academic area. The first artifacts show a syllabus I created for my mock Spanish online course. The objectives, course materials, students' prerequisites, and requirements, course schedules are included in the syllabus to make sure students get the overview of how the course is going to process. The second artifacts is a comparison paper focused on differences and relations between various instructional theories. Reading and reviewing publications and journal articles is not a pleasant work to do, to be honest, but through the tough reading, I gained profound comprehensive knowledge on this topic. The third one is an IT plan dedicating to give assessment, evaluation, suggestions, and redesign of an academical language school. By mocking the situation and learning about the steps of making the plan, I have learned about the importance of the pre-assessment and the updating of technology.
York-Barr, J., & Duke, K. (2004). What do we know about teacher leadership? Findings from two decades of scholarship. Review of educational research, 74(3), 255-316
After reflecting and review my own learning process this year, I've realized the importance of engaging professional and leadership skills and abilities. I will develop my learning and producing abilities effectively by incorporating actively academical activities. Self-teaching is another skill that wishes to engage in the future. With the help of study groups, seminars, article reviews and other supports from professors and peers, I won't be the best one in this area, but I would like to be the one that is always moving forward.