I am required to attend weekly instructional team meetings, and every year I have to

completed a minimum of 20 professional development hours at my school​.​ Throughout the year,

I have done various forms of professional development​.​ My favorite this year was called

“Remind in the Classroom​.​” It was a training displaying all the ways that teachers can use

remind to communicate with their students​.​ This is an app that has been described to change the

way teachers will teach (Marshall, J. M.)​.​ Before attending this staff development, I only used

Remind to remind my students of upcoming assignments that were due, quizzes, or tests​.​ I sent

my Remind code to all my students parents at the beginning of the year as well​. ​This way, they

could also get the notifications from me​.​ After the training, I now you can send files, videos,

pictures, and so much more to your students through Remind​.​ This is something that I would

have never heard of if it were for this staff development opportunity​.

At my school next year, we are launching a new Junior Achievement Academy​.​ One of

the courses that is going to be offered through the academy is honors biology​.​ Being since there

are only two honors biology teachers at my school, I was interested in the opportunity​. ​The

school provided with with a substitute, and I got to go visit another Junior Achievement

Academy​.​ While there, I got to tour the academy, ask the teachers questions, and really learn

about the program​.​ This specific program embedes case studies into the core subjects​.​ Students

in the academy get to visit with the companies to pitch their case studies every 6 weeks​.​ The core

subject teachers work together to plan their lessons​.​ They structure their lessons around whatever
the topic of the case study is​.​ For instance, one case study could be discussing small business

roles in the economy​.​ Every core teacher would plan their lessons to somehow connect to this

case study​.​ Being since this past year was my first year teaching, I felt overwhelmed with the

entire concept and decided against participating in the academy​.​ Studies show that teachers get

overwhelmed when they enter the classroom (Pratt, Y.P. & Danyluk, P. J.)​.​ I have felt

overwhelmed throughout the past year, so I did not want to step into a role that would require

triple the amount of planning than this year​.

I plan to continue my professional development both within my school and through

outside resources​.​ I would love to attend NSTA in the future, and maybe more conferences for

all teachers not just science teacher​.​ I would love to attend professional development that is

inquiry based (Kocagul Saglam, M., & Sahin, M.)​.​ I am required to teach lessons through

inquiry, so I would love for some of my professional development to be inquiry based​.​ I will

continue to attend my instructional team meetings​. ​I feel I have utilized many of the professional

development opportunities that have been offered to me​.

References

KOCAGÜL SAĞLAM, M. m., & ŞAHİN, M. (2017). Inquiry-based Professional Development

Practices for Science Teachers. ​Journal Of Turkish Science Education (TUSED)​, ​14​(4),
66-76.
Marshall, J. m. (2016). Quality Teaching: Seven Apps That Will Change the Way You Teach in
the English Language Arts Classroom. ​Voices From The Middle​, ​23​(4), 66-73.
Pratt, Y. P., & Danyluk, P. J. (2017). Learning What Schooling Left Out: Making an Indigenous
Case for Critical Service-Learning and Reconciliatory Pedagogy within Teacher
Education. ​Canadian Journal Of Education​, ​40​(1), 1-29.