I love my career

On Friday, I was able to participate in my first ever professional development. The dork in me was very excited! Sitting in the commons surrounded by the K-12 faculty, I felt like a real teacher.

The superintendent is retiring at the end of this year and I heard his touching 'thank you' to all of the staff. It was so powerful to hear him say how much he has enjoyed his time because of all the teachers. The school is such a community and it was wonderful to feel a part of that.

We received instructions on how to map out the curriculum for the year with a program called Curriculum Mapping. We then broke into grade level teams and began working! I worked with the 1st grade team, which consists of 4 female teachers of all different experience levels. They had already mapped out their math for the year, so we began with literacy. Literacy is broken into 6 categories:

• Foundational Skills
• Informational Skills
• Writing
• Speaking and Listening
• Literature
• Language/Grammar

Mapping out the whole year is a very daunting task. For a few minutes we all just sat and wondered, "Where do we begin?" Once we got into a groove it was a much easier task to tackle. The teachers had a document which aligned all of the Iowa Core Standards to their curriculum, Basal Reading Program. Rather than having to type all of this information into the program, I helped them discover how to upload files. Once we knew how, we scanned the pages that applied to each category in the program and uploaded them as PDFs.

Once all the standards were aligned with the curriculum, we added in the teaching strategies that they use to teach each category. Many of the teaching strategies apply to more than one of the categories. Some of the strategies they brainstormed are:

• Word sorts
• White boards
• Sight words
• Reader's Theatre
• Modeling
• Think aloud
• Story maps
• Venn diagrams
• Whole group discussion
• Think, pair, share

It was very rewarding for me to sit in on this process. I saw a team of teachers work collaboratively together to finish a project. They supported each other and all contributed. I will be a new and unexperienced teacher in a little over a year and it is very scary to think about walking into an empty classroom and preparing to teach a group of kiddos. It was comforting to know that maps like the one we worked on are available for teachers to help them know where to begin with teaching. The team of teachers also discussed how much your team will help you as a first year teacher. I feel much better about the idea of being a new teacher, it's going to be here before I know it!

Overall, I am very thankful for this experience. I look forward to growing professionally in the future!