Vermont Initial Licensure Portfolio

Part 3

Shane Quintana

12/13/19

Professional Responsibility

Description of Part 3

A universal truth about life is that it is a dynamic experience, constantly changing year by

year, day by day, second by second. In order to keep pace with this never ending change, one

has to continually grow to overcome the demands of the present. Part of being a responsible

teacher is performing the imperative actions that are a part of pedagogical development and

being a competent leader. Two of these imperative actions are continuing professional learning

and collaborating with those involved in the educational process of the students. The different

means of continual learning and collaboration will ensure that I will not remain a stagnant

teacher and that I use modern and efficacious pedagogical approaches.

Criterion 9.1: Continuous Professional Learning

Continuous professional learning can be accomplished in a multitude of ways. One of

the more obvious and frequent methods of professional learning is completing a master’s

program in education or one’s specific field of expertise. The other common form of professional

learning is participating in professional development opportunities, which is how I exhibited my

desire for improvement as a pre-service teacher. One current example of a shift in education

that many teachers are now having to adapt to is proficiency- or standard-based learning.

Already, I have attended a professional development meeting during the course of my student

teaching experience to gain a better understanding of this concept and the process of applying it

to the classroom and grading. At the time, I understood a couple of things about proficiency-

based learning, such as being highly specific about the content and skills to be learned and

improving on student’s failure instead of penalize them for it, but I was ill-informed about the
nuances that make it different and more practical than traditional teaching and grading. The

meeting I attended focused specifically on performance indicators with a larger focus on

learning targets (MRUHS Professional Learning Session). The session began with an overview

of performance indicators and how they are different, yet similar, to graduation standards and

learning targets. Performance indicators are the subcomponents of graduation standards that

specifically express the cognitive actions a student will be able to perform as the result of

finishing a few lessons or a unit. In turn, learning targets are a subcategory of performance

indicators that fully dissects, step-by-step, how a student will meet proficiency in that area

through each lesson. The important aspect of learning targets is that they be comprehensible to

students and that they act as scaffolding to the performance indicators with which they are

aligned. To be accessible to students, learning targets should be written in statements starting

with “I can” and attached to one or two distinct actions related to a performance indicator. Also,

depending on the learning targets one creates, a teacher needs to be conscious of if there is an

order to the targets; if there is, then the targets, and therefore lessons, need to be organized in

a manner that teaches the base skill or skills first, and then develop from that point through

scaffolding. For example, if the ultimate goal of a unit was to analyze a text, then one of the first

learning targets should be associated with reading comprehension because a student cannot

analyze a text if they do not understand it, and it would not make sense to teach reading

comprehension after something like identifying a theme. Finally, the seminar concluded with an

explanation of how assessments, lessons, activities, and resources are structured around

learning targets. Once learning targets are established, the next thing that should be crafted is

the summative assessment. Because learning targets articulate the skills students will learn,

one must figure out how to accurately measure student acquisition of these skills. Then, having

a tentative summative assessment will naturally lead to the creation of several formative

assessments that will help gauge the areas students have met proficiency or need extra help.

With the summative and formative assessments organized, one can start to plan daily lessons.
The purpose of having lesson planning come third in this sequence is that there is a stated goal

(performance indicators/learning targets) and a way to measure student attainment of the goal

(assessments), so now one can determine the specific activities to reach that goal. The last step

is to generate learning extensions. These extensions are essential for the learning differences

one will find in the classroom. Learning extensions need to be in place for students that are

below the proficiency standard and are having difficulty reaching this mark, or for students who

are excelling with the content and want to enhance their learning experience.

The advantages I received from this meeting are twofold. The first obvious one is that I

now have a firm grasp on the differences between graduation standards, performance

indicators, and learning targets, which are critical components of standards-based education. I

also understand how to construct these and implement them into my lessons. What I truly

extracted out of this seminar is how proficiency-based education is different from the traditional

system and the tremendous benefits it provides for students. This is extremely helpful for me to

know, even if I do not teach in a school aligned with proficiency-based learning. I believe in

focusing on student development of essential life skills rather than student retention of minute

facts that can be quickly accessed through the internet, which is an important shift in education

that grading for proficiencies introduces; this is why I plan to design my lessons and grade

based on proficiencies regardless of where I am teaching.

Another professional development opportunity I experienced during my time as a pre-

service teacher was doing a reciprocal peer-observation and evaluation (Collaborative

Observations, MRUHS Mentor Notes Week 7). First, the teachers in attendance chose an

aspect of their lessons or classroom environment that they wanted a colleague to specifically

observe. Since this occurred earlier in my student teaching, and I was beginning to work on

keeping track of individual student behavior, I asked my cooperating teacher to observe student

on-task and off-task behavior during one of my lessons. In turn, my cooperating teacher asked

me to poll which students she called on for a response as well as whether students were raising
their hands or blurting out answers. From what was observed and recorded by my cooperating

teacher, I learned that student off-task behavior was more common than I anticipated. The

typical transgressions were talking with a peer, drawing, or staring into space. This provided me

the opportunity to reflect on my own skills and design of lessons. The first conclusion I came to

was my fixed preoccupation with what I was saying. I realized that because I focused so much

attention on how I was phrasing my instructions, I gave little attention to how the students were

responding. I would do my best to scan the room and take note of students’ body language, but

there was so much information to take-in as well as produce that my mind gravitated towards

giving information instead of receiving information, so I would often miss a student with their

head down, drawing in their notebook. The other off-task behavior came during the activity

section of the lesson. The issue I had during this time was when I had to work with students

one-on-one to guide them through the work. When this would happen, my full attention would be

centered on the student, but this meant that I unintentionally did not notice what other students

would be doing, which was at times talking with their friends, drawing, or doing nothing. Again, I

did not allocate my attention efficiently to maintain the classroom environment I strived for. What

my cooperating teacher’s observations also demonstrated to me was that my activity was not

engaging enough. Because of the percentage of students that were off-task during the activity, I

presumed that students found little to no meaning in the work, or it was too simple for some.

After that peer-observation and discussion, I began to work on creating practice exercises that

not only concentrated on student development, but was also something the students would

appreciate doing--appreciate not because of how fun the work is, but because of the meaning

they find in it.

Overall, this experience of professional development led me to self-improvement through

objective data and reflection. This was not only helpful in the short-term with my time student

teaching, but also in the long-term, where I made pedagogical advancements in lesson planning

and classroom management as well as learning a new means of career development that can
and will be utilized continuously throughout my career. In my beginning years as a teacher, I will

advance my learning mostly through vocational training meetings and seminars within and

outside of the community in which I will be. I will research and take part in any seminar,

conference, course, retreat, or workshop that I believe will make me a better teacher. I will also

take advantage of my surrounding resources, such as peers and their educational toolkits, to

gather new and tested information and add it to my own repertoire. Besides making use of these

experiences for my immediate practice, they will also prepare me for my future goal of obtaining

a master’s degree in education, which will be another way for me to learn as a professional.

Criterion 10.1: Collaborate to Ensure Learning

Collaborating with every person involved in the learning process is fundamental to the

development of students; and every person includes administration, teaching associates,

parents, and most importantly, students. As a pre-service teacher, I made sure to effectively

communicate with my cooperating teacher and students to advance my current and future

practice to ensure students would and will receive the most from my lessons.

My first extensive experience with effective collaboration in the classroom is the

aforementioned reciprocal peer-observation with one of my cooperating teachers (Collaborative

Observations, MRUHS Mentor Notes Week 7). Other than this opportunity being a moment of

professional development, it was also a lesson in how to help colleagues and receive help from

colleagues. An important distinction that the instructors made for this process was making sure

we recorded evidence instead of opinions when observing. An example would be how I

collected data based on my cooperating teacher’s request of observing the students she called

on for a response and how often students blurted out answers. What I avoided doing was

making remarks about a student being called on too much or marking that the amount of times

students yelled an answer without waiting was unacceptable, and instead I simply made tally

marks for which students gave answers due to a raised hand and when an answer was
impulsively exclaimed to gather objective, quantitative evidence. The same standard held for the

post-observation discussion. When reviewing what was noted during the class, my comments

needed to pertain to the recorded evidence without any judgement or evaluations. The

important part about this exercise was that the one being observed was the person who had to

interpret the data and make conclusions to better their practice. Therefore, part of the

discussion was creating and asking probing questions to further the thinking of the observed

teacher. This is how I learned to efficiently give guidance to cohorts without applying

suggestions (unless requested) or scrutiny. On the other hand, this occurrence also taught me

how to humbly receive objective information about my classroom environment and teaching

methods and use it to enhance my pedagogical abilities. At first, it was discouraging to see the

degree to which off-task behavior was occuring, especially because I was not so perceptive of it

in my earlier teaching experience. But, I came around to the realization that this data presented

an area of my practice in which I could greatly improve upon. Being shown this also instigated

me to reflect on the lesson I had planned and how I implemented it to understand the deficiency

that incited some student disengagement. The fact that this process improves the skills of my

coworkers as well is the other reason why I will continue to do reciprocal observations.

During my second student teaching experience in the fall of 2019, my main method of

collaboration was focused one-on-one conversations with my cooperating teacher and the

students. To start, my student teaching schedule was beneficial in that the last block of the day

was a planning period, so this gave me time to reflect on the day’s lessons and converse with

my cooperating teacher. As is the case with pedagogy, every day presented a new challenge to

solve--how to keep advanced learners engaged, how to support struggling learners, how to

encourage student participation, how to regulate disruptive student conversations. I used this

planning period as a time to collaborate with my cooperating teacher to address the issues I

encountered (Shane Quintana's Student Teaching Supervisory Document). One prominent

situation we discussed often was working with a loquacious and easily distracted class with
lower levels of engagement. The overall issue was that a portion of students would have loud

side conversations not related to the content that I would continually have to curb, but would be

resumed a few minutes after I had them focus on the assignments. This cycle led to not only the

talkative students producing underwhelming work for their capabilities, but also other students

being distracted because of their urge to join the conversation or because of the volume of

noise. My first means of management was to talk with individual students in the hall or after

class to discuss their behavior and mutually determine a way to keep them focused in the

classroom. I found this to be a good practice for building relationships with students, but the

allure of joking with friends was much stronger, and these specific students would revert back to

their old habits after a couple days. Because my cooperating teacher saw and experienced the

same dilemma, we would have lengthy conversations about how to work with these students so

that everyone would perform to the level that they were capable of. My cooperating teacher and

I agreed on starting with the least harsh forms of management and only escalating the severity

of punishment if necessary, so the first suggestion from my mentor teacher that I implemented

was creating a new seating arrangement. Because I had a good grasp on which students

caused the most distractions and who was friends with who, I was able to create a seating chart

that certainly helped diminish the side conversations, but not fully arrest the problem. After that,

my cooperating teacher told me to think about how I was organizing my lessons and how many

activities I had included and how much time I allotted for each activity. In hindsight, this was the

most helpful discussion and advice I received. With these comments, I realized that my lessons,

although successful with another freshman class, were not tailored to the needs of this class.

They demanded a lot of patience and focus because of the amount of reading and writing

involved, which many students in this block did not have. So for this class, I began to add one

extra exercise that was lower in cognitive demand but still developed some academic skill to

decrease the amount of time spent on one activity in consideration of the students with low

attention spans. This was the most useful advice I received as a pre-service teacher. It was
amazing to see how one small activity added to an agenda can produce longer periods of focus

in the classroom.

Figuring out how to properly manage this class was one of my main goals. I realize I

never would have been able to achieve this goal if it were not for the collaboration between my

cooperating teacher and myself. Here, collaboration was so necessary and effective because I

had little experience and knowledge of working with such an energetic group, where my mentor

teacher had. I did search online resources for solutions, but I often found overarching answers

that did not address the specific and unique challenges these students presented. Discussing

this with my mentor, however, was perfect in that he understood exactly the situation I was

working with and had more than one solution to use if another failed. Here, collaboration was a

multifaceted and personal process that positively altered my methods of teaching.

Another form of collaboration that proved to be helpful was talking with students about

how they preferred to be assessed. Initially, I assumed that the students would prefer to do a

creative writing project for the book we read instead of a classic five paragraph essay. So early

in my unit, I told the students my plan for this creative assessment to prepare them. However, I

was surprised to hear that not everyone was excited about this alternative to the five paragraph

essay. I ultimately took a vote to see what the majority of students preferred and found that it

was a fifty-fifty split. I then decided that I would create an assessment in both the creative and

classic form and let the students decide which assignment they wanted to complete. I found that

giving students these two options allowed for them to present their understanding through a

method they were more comfortable with or enjoyed. What I also found through collaborating

with students on the final assessment was that the struggling learners were more receptive to

doing the work. Typically, these particular students had difficulty with explicitly articulating their

ideas through writing. The final creative writing option was a way to demonstrate their

understanding through imagination, metaphor, and imagery. For some of these students, it was

difficult to determine the amount of the novel they comprehended based on their responses to
formative assessments, but the creative summative assessment clearly exhibited their

comprehension of the content, which was much more than traditional methods extracted. I

believe that this moment of collaboration was a critical part of my student teaching experience

because of these positive results. When I incorporated student voice and choice in how they

were to be assessed, there was an increase in student responsibility and engagement because

they now had a part and stake in the assignment instead of it being forced on them.

What I discovered about collaboration is the high-level of critical thinking and reflection

that is an innate and essential part of the process. For example, the peer reciprocal classroom

observations would have been a vacant activity without critical thinking and reflection. First, one

has to effectively analyze an area of their practice one wants to review, which takes a significant

amount of thinking. Then once the data has been collected, one has to scrutinize and reflect on

lessons or behaviors to understand the results of the data and figure out why certain situations

are occurring in an effort to develop as a teacher. Collaborative discussions follow a similar

process to collaborative observations. Initially, it takes reflection and an analysis of one’s

practice to recognize a predicament to resolve or possible area of improvement within the

classroom. These ideas take a deeper level of thinking in order for them to be expressed

concisely to colleagues; this clear articulation allows for peers to understand the situation as

well as provide related and specific support for the circumstance. Finally, one has to thoughtfully

consider the advice received from associates and integrate what would be most helpful in one’s

lesson planning and style of classroom management. These are the reasons why I will always

scrutinize and review the lessons I create and my behaviors as a teacher. I will maintain the

mental discipline and openness needed for effective collaboration to make sure my methods

are appropriate for the time as well as the different, unique students I will be responsible for.