Running head: TELLING MY STORY USING MY PDQP 1

Telling My Story Using My PDQP

Ashlynn Griffith
National University
TELLING MY STORY USING MY PDQP 2

Abstract
The following assignment is intended to tell the story of my progress in the teaching profession

and my reflection on that progress as I begin creating my Professional Development Quest

Portfolio (PDQP). In this assignment I will evaluate my progress in achieving competencies in

Teaching Performance Expectations in Domain A, identify my strengths and needs associated

with Domain A, discuss TPE competencies that I will use in my PDQP, and provide a rationale

for selecting my goals within Domain A.

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I started my journey as a teacher in November 2013 in Fresno, CA. I was in the Multiple

Subject Credential Program at National and had completed half of my coursework when I

applied for a student teaching internship. After my interview with the first school that contacted

me, I was offered an internship as a sixth grade teacher at Ericson Elementary School in Fresno

Unified. That first year was exciting, yet challenging, and it taught me so much about what it

really means to be a teacher. Since then, I have added five more years of experience and have

moved to a school in an affluent neighborhood with extremely high expectations set by the

district, school administration, and parent community. Although I know that I have grown each

year, I feel like there are always multiple areas in which I would like to improve. By creating my

PDQP and reflecting on my artifacts, I have been able to clearly see the areas where I have made

improvement, as well as the areas where I still need to grow.

TPE 1A in Domain A has multiple competencies listed within each of the subject areas

that multiple subject teachers are expected to teach. Since this TPE is so broad, it has been

challenging for me to focus in on exactly which competences I should cover in my PDQP. The

article “Five Standards of Effective Pedagogy” really helped me focus in on the overarching

competencies within TPE 1A by limiting my thinking to five standards, or terms. “Terms help

simplify the complexity inherent in each standard, thus making it easier to create or collect

artifacts that relate to the standards” (Costantino, 2009, p. 13). The five standards, or terms,

presented in the article are: joint productive activity, language development, contextualization,

challenging activities, and instructional conversation. These five standards are intertwined in the

pedagogical skills presented in each subject area of TPE 1A. It is very helpful for me to think of

these standards as the essential competencies within Domain A.

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The competencies within TPE 1A were introduced to me during my credential program,

taught again during my BTSA program, I reflected on them frequently in BTSA assignments, my

performance with the competencies are regularly evaluated by my administrators, and they are

focused on in many of my staff meetings and professional development trainings. Although I

will always have room to grow, my frequent exposure to these competencies in my career have

helped me stay focused on challenging myself to improve each day.

The following table shows what I believe to be my current strengths and needs for each

subject area in Domain A. All phrases are taken from the California Teaching Performance

Expectations (Commission on Teacher Credentialing, 2013).

Subject Area Strengths Needs

English-Language  Rigorous instruction in  Rigorous instruction in

reading, writing, and speaking and listening
Arts language  Provide opportunities for
 Strategically planning students to read
instruction for students to purposefully and listen
meet or exceed standards attentively
 Print-rich environment
 Developing students’
abilities to cite specific
evidence
 Developing students’
abilities to write in a
sophisticated way
 Provide opportunities for
students to develop oral
communication and
interpersonal skills
 Provide opportunities with
media and technology
Mathematics  Use processes of making  Support students in making
connections in real world and testing conjectures and
situations recognizing relationships
 Provide a secure within and among concepts
environment for taking
intellectual risks
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 Require student
collaboration and written
and oral communication
 Provide opportunities with
media and technology
Science  Teach students to
independently read and
comprehend instructional
materials
 Teach students to write text
in the content area
History-Social  Teach students to
independently read and
Science comprehend instructional
materials
 Teach students to write text
in the content area
 Use timelines and maps
 Balance the focus of
instruction between science
information, concepts, and
investigations
 Provide opportunities with
media and technology
 Provide opportunities with
media and technology
 Help students understand
events and periods from
multiple perspectives

Within my PDQP, I plan to focus on my areas of strength and the areas where I have

demonstrated the most growth since the beginning of my career. One of my current strengths that

was a goal of mine at the beginning of my BTSA program is providing rigorous instruction. I

have grown tremendously in my understanding of Common Core standards, so I am now able to

reference the frameworks on a regular basis and ensure that I am following the rigor intended

within the standards. I have also grown a lot in facilitating oral communication and student

collaboration. My first few artifacts are goal sheets that I created during my first year of BTSA.

These goal sheets expressed my desire to grow in the areas of rigorous instruction and student

collaboration. My final artifact is an evaluation that my Principal completed on me following

multiple classroom observations. This observation showed that he saw these as areas of strength

and he commended me for my progress.

The primary areas that I see as professional needs in all subject areas are not major

weaknesses, but areas that I want to focus on as I continue to grow in my field. Although I
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believe that I do regularly promote speaking and listening in my classroom, my students are not

always held accountable for actively listening during collaboration and I don’t always require

students to speak about what they learned from their classmates. In math and science, I want to

increase the amount of hands-on investigations that I have my students participate in. Although I

use technology frequently in ELA and math, I do not incorporate it as often in my science and

social studies lessons. These are the areas that I selected as my current professional needs in

Domain A.

Throughout the development of my PDQP, I hope to take the time to celebrate the growth

that I have had so far. Teaching is a challenging and often exhausting profession. I regularly

question myself and think that I am not performing as well as I would like. This reflection

process should hopefully help me focus on my strengths and see that I have grown significantly

since my first teaching job in 2013. I also hope to develop attainable goals for future

improvement and professional development. This project has been a great experience for me so

far and I am excited to see how my story continues to unfold in the next three weeks.
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References

Commission on Teacher Credentialing. (2013, March). California Teaching Performance

Expectations [PDF]. Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

Costantino, P. M., & De Lorenzo, M. N. (2009). Developing a Professional Teaching Portfolio:

A Guide for Success (Third ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Teaching Tolerance. (n.d.). Five Standards of Effective Pedagogy. Retrieved November 2, 2018,

from https://www.tolerance.org/professional-development/five-standards-of-effective-

pedagogy