Renée Carrington-Baptiste

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Section F – Reflective Comprehensive Summary

The development of this portfolio may well be described as a process of self-

discovery, growth as well as solidification of pre-knowledge over the last nine months. It has

been a challenge balancing life’s day to day personal and professional commitments while

still meeting assignment deadlines, preparing for field days as well as school visits.

However, this portfolio offered the opportunity to reflect on the growth made in specific

areas and how these have shaped my overall professional development.

The presentation of this portfolio as a weebly is itself a testament to growth in my

technological prowess. Likewise, I have seen much development in how I approach a class

and plan for individual classes and individual lessons. While my philosophy of who my

students are remains much the same, how I present content to them has changed. Now in

preparing, I am more cognizant of each child as an individual in the class instead of the class

with many individual students. Thus, I have tried to vary the tasks and assessments

throughout my lessons with much more thought to challenging each child instead of just

some children.

A major standout point for me through the development of this portfolio and overall

during this programme has been the absolute need for collaboration among colleagues. The

old adage says that two heads are better than one and no place is this more real than in

teaching and certainly in the Diploma in Education programme. Over the course of field days

and my personal teaching practices I have seen where collaboration instead of competition,

has benefitted the students with richly rewarding lessons with conceptually sound lessons

infused with interesting and fun activities which brought deeper opportunities for learning. I
believe my continued professional development will be hinged in large part to the continued

strengthening of collaborations between colleagues in my department, my school and the new

colleagues and friends made during the course of this programme. Indeed, the members of

my curriculum group along with our supervisor have made this experience all the more

interesting and edifying with their encouragements as well as their constructive criticisms.

In closing, the development of this portfolio has allowed me the chance to be a true

reflective practitioner. Through my eyes this means that although there were challenges,

failures and low moments, these helped me to learn and grow. All that resulted from these

moments was a chance to reassess, take the vital lessons they offered to grown and develop

into a better educator.