Professional Development

In my time at Longwood and in the honors college, another important part of growing as students and citizen leaders are the opportunities for professional development.

As each student is welcomed into the honors family, one of the first experiences that we have with developing necessary skills for professional discourse is through our business etiquette dinner. From our first retreat to our last, I have been to four business and etiquette dinners with the honors college, in addition to a community breakfast hosted by President Reveley, as well as important lunch and breakfast meetings to meet with important faculty in regards to Practicum and student  teaching placements. As we get further into college, and get closer to interviews with potential employers, it is important to know the etiquette of how to act during interviews over lunch. Every meeting like this gives new tools or tips on how to conduct oneself, and how to still show respect while enjoying a meal together. These dinners with honors helped to prepare me for the meetings with my university advisors for student teaching, and other important meetings that have had meals as a part of the interview process. Without these dinners, I would not feel so comfortable or as knowledgeable for this part of an interview.

Another opportunity for professional development as a student in the education program would be the numerous opportunities for placements in classrooms. While I have been made aware of how other programs or other colleges have fewer placements or shorter professional placements, I am always grateful to think about how Longwood has a very carefully created program to maximize our interactions with actual students and schools while still giving us direct instruction. In the Special Education program, we are given direct coaching and instruction on literacy as we embark on our Partnership semester in primary or secondary schools in our Junior year. Here, we receive firsthand experience in lesson planning daily, as well as how to conduct these plans and tailor remediation plans to an exact student’s needs, and carry these plans out as well. Through creating our Teacher Work Sample binders, we create a collections of our hard work, which includes our diversity reports, understanding of the classroom and students, written works describing  the plan for remediation and lesson plan layout, as well as a collection of each lesson plan and all materials used.  This binder, which we also compiled and presented with a poster presentation, is something that details our learning experience and can be taken with us to showcase our knowledge!

Finally, Student teaching has been the most challenging but also rewarding in the sense that I now have more understanding as to how I want to be as a teacher. Compared to my semester in a kindergarten room, and three weeks in an eighth grade Math collaborative room, I feel more comfortable in lesson planning and how to differentiate each lesson based on all student needs. Where before I felt that lesson plans were a more solid figure that was cemented once written, I now that being more flexible and changing as you go is necessary and okay! Switching subjects and making topics my own has become second nature as well, where a the start I was nervous to take over someone else’s room. Instead, I’ve only added and molded my teaching philosophy into my own ideas from experience rather through what I learned while sitting at a desk. Where at previous placements I was following the lead of my cooperating teachers, I have learned to be creative and being in fresh ideas, while still learning from and bringing in the old. Instead of following the lesson plans from my cooperating teachers, I learned how to find and pull resources to create something newer- even if I still maintained parts of older lesson ideas. Instead of being nervous, I am excited to communicate with and form instructional ideas with the team of teachers, and I have greater understanding and firsthand experience with collaborating with other teachers. Where lesson planning was previously daunting, especially concerning math- which has never been my strongest subject- I learned that other teachers are always there to help make your ideas and lessons stronger! I can not wait to see what my future classroom may be, but I feel all the more ready for it.