Professional Educator Statement
Order Description
ASSIGNMENT: DEVELOPING AS A PROFESSIONAL EDUCATOR STATEMENT
(500 words, maximum).
The intent of this assignment is to give you the opportunity to reflect on your practice and prepare you for writing a similar statement when applying for an educator positions. To receive full credit for this assignment, you are encouraged to provide thoughtful and reflective responses to some of the guiding prompts and questions provided below. Remember that this is a 1.5 page assignment that illustrates basic information about your contributions to the teaching profession.
Guidelines for the Professional Educator Statement
1. State your Positionality. Write a statement of their own positionality regarding your own narrative on how you experienced learning and schooling. The statement can include your personal and/or family experience with schooling, struggles, successes, learning a language(s) other than English, and how this positionality may influence your beliefs about teaching today. Include your current stance with respect to your beliefs on how students today learn. What do you know about the different student populations that our schools serve? What are your beliefs about language learning? What are your beliefs about addressing learning for students with special needs? For struggling students? For advanced students? What are your beliefs about assessing student learning?
2. Your professional educator statement should entail the description of what skills you currently bring the the teaching profession. You may address such issues as what goals you plan to set for your classes, what the rationale behind them is, what kind of activities you are prepared to implement in class in order to reach these goals, and how your goals may change over time as you learn more about teaching and learning and as you learn about the needs of your students. For instance, you can describe how you have expected students to learn not only the content, but also skills such as critical thinking, writing, and problem solving, include an elaboration on your intend to design and plan individual lessons, and how you will use assessment data towards accomplishing these goals.
3. Implementation of the philosophy. An important component of your educator statement should include an illustration of how one’s concepts about teaching and learning and goals for students are transformed into classroom activities. Ask yourself, “How do I operationalize my philosophy of teaching in the classroom?” How do I assess student learning via multiple measures?, and “What personal characteristics in myself or my students influence the way in which I approach teaching?” To answer these questions, you may reflect on how you present yourself and course materials, what activities, assignments, and projects you implement in the teaching-learning process, how you interact with students in and outside class, and the consequences for building relationships with students.
4. Professional growth plan?It is important for teachers to continue professional growth, and to do so, teachers need to set clear goals and means to accomplish these goals. Think about questions such as “What goals have I set for myself as a teacher?” and “How do I accomplish
these goals?” You can elaborate this plan in your statement of teaching philosophy. For instance, you can illustrate how you have professionally grown over the years (courses, workshops, conferences), what challenges exist at the present, what long-term development goals you have projected, and what you will do to reach these goals. It is important to write about how your perspectives, thoughts, and actions have changed and evolved over time.
5. What are your research interests? What current education topics are you interested in learning more about?
Other questions that may help guide your personal statement:
• How did I learn?
• How was my learning assessed by teachers?
• Howdopeople/studentslearn?
• How do I facilitate that learning?
• What goals do I have for my students?
• Why do I teach the way that I do?
• What do I do to implement these ideas about teaching and learning in the classroom?
• Are these things working? How do I know they are working?
• Do my student meet the lesson/content goals?
• What are my personal future goals for growth as a teacher?