Olds High School Teacher Professional Growth Plan

2017/2018

Teacher: Emily Hay

Professional Goal: Engage with student feedback to create more engaging and
meaningful lessons

What does this goal mean for your students?

My students will be asked to provide constructive feedback at periodic times

throughout the semester. These exit slips will focus on different aspects of the
classroom (i.e., manner of instruction, types of exercises, atmosphere) in order to
identify where there can be improvement and what to keep stable. The students
will be active members of the class and will be able to have input in the direction
of instruction. This will ultimately make it a more enjoyable experience for all and
will allow for meaningful learning.

How will this goal affect your teaching practice?

I will be first instructing my students as to how to properly provide constructive

feedback so that they can help guide my practices. My instruction will change
depending on the feedback and my ability to do so. I will be collaborating with
Shelley Smith and Karla Pohl at each new exit slip so that I can use their
experience and build of one another. This goal will improve my teaching and show
me which practices are most effective for future years.

What impact will this goal have on our school?

This goal will help the students of my classes be more engaged with their learning.
By making my classes (hopefully) a bit easier for them, they can have more energy
and motivation to put towards other classes. It may also inspire other teachers to do
something similar.

What are your plans for your individual professional development day? How will
this help achieve your goal? N/A

Literacy Goal: Expand students understanding of scientific writing.

What does this goal mean for your students?

My students are relatively new to the world of science which has its own unique
language. I want to push my students to engage with this language both in reading
and their own writing. To get them to read, I will have them dissect small sections
of research and to apply it to the classroom learning. For the writing piece, I will
start to introduce them to full lab reports. I will break down this task into smaller
sections (e.g., introduction, materials, discussion) to show them how the language
works. Once all the parts have been taught, they will be asked to put it all together
in a full lab report. This will help them understand how to better read research as
well as to prepare them for Grade 12 and university.

How will this improve literacy in your subject area?

They will have the tools to be able to read any kind of scientific article as well as
to write one. By being able to read scientific lingo, their resources and places of
knowledge will expand and help them to become more well-rounded in areas of
interest.

Wellness Goal: Create a healthy work-life balance that I can continue into future
years.

How will you achieve this goal?

I have trouble accepting anything but perfect so I will be telling myself that
sometimes good is good enough. I am also currently reading The Gifts of
Imperfection by Brene Brown and will be following her advice and research in
order to allow myself to break down my expectations of perfection.

I will leave the school by 5:00pm each day so that I can relax and be emotionally
prepared for my students every day (there will be exceptions to this deadline if
needed). The weekends (unless needed) will be school free as well. I plan on
restarting horseback riding to have a concrete way to destress as well as exercising
at least four times per week.

How will this goal affect your teaching practice?

By allowing myself to accept that I will not be perfect, it will allow me to be more
flexible in my classroom and with my scheduling. It will also allow me to accept
that I am a beginner teacher and should expect mistakes. I am also trying to stop
comparing myself to experienced teachers in ways that is detrimental to my
enjoyment of the profession. This goal will also allow me to avoid burn out both
during my practicum and in my coming years as a certified teacher. There are
many new teachers who do not build these guidelines and will find themselves
overwhelmed and ultimately beaten by the stress. By starting now, I can hopefully
find my coming years more enjoyable and a little less stressed.

Professional Growth In Action

How can your RLC help you to achieve your goals this year?

1. Provide ideas/materials and encouragement when looking at feedback

2. Share new scientific or news articles that they have read
3. Reminders to look after self
4. Ideas on how to de-stress
5. Being open to just listening
Year-end reflection: Do you feel you achieved your goal? What improvements did you see
in your professional practice? How do you feel your students responded? What would you have
liked to have done differently?

Professional Goal - I do believed I achieved this goal because I would gauge the students
achievements and successes every week to help check in. Depending on how well they
were understanding the material, I would change up my approach or give them some
concentrated practice time. I also had a formal feedback day when I asked every student
to fill out a survey. From this, I learned some valuable insight into how they were
receiving the class and decided to change some of my approaches. I will keep up this
practice of asking for formalized feedback from the students since I am only effective if
they are actually learning. I could be using a technique that may not work for them even
if it had worked earlier.
Literacy Goal - this goal was not achieved. I did try to teach the students how to properly
write scientifically but because I am still figuring out the curriculum for myself I was
unable to do this to the extent that I was hoping. I also found that I did not have time to
be able to have the students explore scientific articles to learn how to read and interpret
other scientists writing. This will keep being a goal in the future because it is an
invaluable skill to have for future scientific endeavours, especially if they enter the
university level. I also believe that by teaching them how to analyze and dissect scientific
writing it will aid them when writing tests or other summative assessments.
 Wellness Goal - this goal was a bit tricky for me during this practicum. For the first three
months I was involved with the Senior Girls Volleyball so I was spending a lot of my
time after school and on weekends helping with that. This definitely caused me some
stress as there were times when I did not feel as though I was prepared for school. But, I
was able to ensure that I had at least one day a week where I would take a rest day to
ensure that I was energized once again for Monday. I will still have to work and be highly
focused to ensure that I can keep a balance and do not burn out.