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Thursday, April 12, 2012

At-home professional development

I don't think it's a secret that I love my job. I love teaching. I love watching kids learn. I love watching kids succeed after struggling with a concept. I love watching kids understand something right away and just get it. I love my job. However, I am not an expert. I am not perfect. My lessons aren't perfect. I am a good teacher, but not a great one. Not yet anyway. This is my first year of teaching and I am still learning a LOT.

Because I'm not perfect, I try to get my hands on any type of professional development reading that I can. This includes books like Helena Curtain's Making the Match, Harry Wong's The First Days of School,  Doug Lemov's Teach Like A Champion, and Neila Connors' If You Don't Feed the Teachers, They Eat the Students! It also includes education magazines, like the TFA alum magazine One Day (I'm not TFA alum but my husband is) or the National Education Association's magazine NEA Today. I also read the Foreign Language Annals which is a scholarly journal produced by The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). The annals are a collection of articles on different research projects about teaching and learning a second language.

There are a lot more resources out there... different blogs, internet collaboration sites, more books, more magazines, more scholarly journals, etc. I love that I have time during my train commute to stay up-to-date on the foreign language world. Next year, I probably won't have this luxury (yes, this is my positive spin on my over-an-hour commute each way) so I'll be sure to make time to read. I think staying current with teaching styles and methods is a very important part of what I do and it definitely helps make me a better teacher.

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