Professional Portfolio

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One professional goal that I have for myself beyond induction is to really look at my school provided curriculum and looking into how UDL practices can be embedded with them. So many of our school provided tools are still not aligned with UDL principles, and I have seen that a lot of materials that I have used in my classroom for the last two years are still inaccessible to certain students. I plan on going over a lot of the curricular supplies over my Summer break and looking at them through a lens of a student with various learning styles and abilities to identify potential barriers and things that are lacking in our lessons. I will measure goal attainment by creating a list of lessons or activities that I would like to supplement in my classroom. 

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Some teachers tend to isolate themselves and operate in their own little bubbles. I, however, do not intend to do so. I have received countless hours of help and learned many different methods of teaching from my colleagues and from various trainings. I will remain a connected educator throughout my career by continuing to be a proactive member or my Professional Learning groups, as well as will be participating in my school's collaborative panel next school year. I also worked on improving connections with parent-teacher relationships as well this year, which I intend to continue to foster in the years to come within my career. 

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In order to sustain the energy it takes to be passionate about my job, I will continue with my daily routines and mantras that I did for one of my instruction cycles. I made sure to wake up with a mantra before I got up out of bed, and that actually really helped to keep me from falling into morning negativity (the "I don't wanna get outta bed today" feelings!). Using that positive self-talk actually made quite a difference in my day I found! I also found that "shelving" different problems helped me to focus on my students and my teaching. Any problems that I was facing in my personal life, I was able to set them aside until after 3:00pm. Likewise, I also turned off from teacher brain after 3:00pm so that I could focus on things that I have to do at home, and so that I can focus on self-care and spending time with my family. Prioritizing both of those times equally has helped me keep my joy for each of them in a more sustainable fashion!

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The best advice that I would honestly provide to new teachers is...respect yourself! Respect your time, respect your self-care, respect your physical and mental health, and respect your professional standing. You know who you are and how you got here. No one else does. So take care of that person because we all know how hard it is to get to where we have today, and we did it! So take care of that person so that you can keep doing it!