Maria Rios

03/06/19

Professional Development Plan proposal rough draft/hard copy

1. Description of Community, School, and Student Context:

A) I teach in a 9th and 10th grade Spanish Language Arts classroom at Rio Grande High

School. The student body makeup is 54 percent male and 46 percent female and the total

minority enrollment is 96%. Hispanics make up 93% of the student body. Some of these

students are English dominant with low Spanish proficiency and others are Spanish dominant

with low English proficiency. Some example questions for student demographics are – What

languages are spoken at home? Do students read Spanish at home? Do they read English? How

do they read? Do they have access to technology, computers and smart phones – especially

translation tools. Rio Grande High School is located in the South Valley. In 2016, there were

5.01 times more Hispanic residents in South Valley than any other race or ethnicity totaling

33,519 Hispanic residents compared to 6,688 white and 452 native residents. 47 % of residents

speak English at home and 49.2 % of residents speak Spanish at home. 100% of the student body

is considered economically disadvantaged so educational tools and resources might be limited

for many families, including nutrition, 100% of students are eligible for free lunch. The

graduation rate is 66% and the measurement of reading proficiency is 32%, while math

proficiency is at 15%.

B) Understanding the context of my Spanish Language Arts classroom is important to meeting

the needs of learners. For example, proficiency in math is related to which language is most

relatable to the learner and if they are having their needs met. How well students are doing in
their other classes affects performance in Spanish language arts and Spanish language arts could

have an impact and improve proficiency and scores in other areas including math.

I also have been learning about diversity of how different backgrounds, culture and

immigration make a difference of the Spanish language level. One thing I have been noticing is

that not all learners have the same experiences with learning Spanish and English that I do, I

think it will be very important not to make assumptions about reading, writing, speaking and

listening based on my own experiences and to conduct a survey at the beginning of the semester

that asks students questions about how much Spanish students use at home and in the

community, if they read in Spanish, watch TV in Spanish or in English, if their parents speak

only Spanish or both Spanish and English, if they are immigrants or born here, what generation

their family immigrated, if they started learning English since they were born or only when they

started school, etc. Evaluating the answers to these questions will help me to build a classroom

profile and understand the different types of learners and their language experiences.

C) For this assignment, I will focus on my third period students. These students are all fluent

Spanish speaking and from Spanish speaking backgrounds. The different demographics and

background of my students influences how difficult Spanish language arts is for them, and how

they relate to the lessons as well. I think understanding students as Spanish Language Learners

gives insight and understanding to how well students relate to, engage with and succeed not just

in the Spanish Language Arts Classroom, but in all their other classes as well.

2. Rationale and Focus for Professional Learning:

The focus of my Professional Development Plan is to effectively engage students in

learning and increase their participation. The NM Teach Domain is 3C: Teaching for Learning:
Engaging Students in Learning. The reason I want to focus on this domain is because in

previous observation in the fall I scored a 2 on domain 3C and my field supervisor asked me,

“What can you do to increase the level of engagement of students?” She also asked me, “How

can you help students feel comfortable enough to share their thoughts?” My mentor teacher also

gave me a score of 2 on domain 3C, but she gives more feedback about what is working than

what isn’t.

I think this is an important area to focus on because when students are more engaged and

interested, they learn better. There are three questions that are asked in Domain 3C and I have

goals to improve my teaching in each of these areas. The first question is, “To what level are

students engaging in the lesson’s activities?” My goal for this section is to work on improving

making lesson that are more student centered rather than a lesson that is teacher centered. The

second question is, “To what level are activities sequential and aligned to the daily learning

target?” My goal for this project is to build a lesson that has scaffolding, and the activities build

up and make sense for the learner. The last question in Domain 3C is, “To what level are

students required to be intellectually engaged with the course content?” My goal for this is to

make sure that the lesson has essential questions that make the content meaning and relevant to

the student’s lived experiences, and helps them make connections to other lessons, and ideas.

This goal is relevant to teacher candidate and learner success, because as a teacher if I

can improve my understanding of how to make lessons that are student centered and to scaffold

for diverse learners, and create activities that are connected and flow well, I will gain a lot of

skills for lesson planning and development, that will help me to design better lesson plans later

on. More importantly it is relevant to learner success because by focusing on lessons that are
designed more for students and that make sense, they will have a higher chance of learning

something better.

3. Use of Evidence to Evaluate Practice:

The first pieces of evidence that I have are the observations from my field supervisor and

my mentor teacher from last fall. I met with my mentor teacher to discuss the evaluation of the

observation at the beginning of the semester, and we discussed ways to increase student

participation and make lessons more engaging. More specifically we discussed using more

partner work, and group work activities as way to build student centered teaching rather than

lessons that are teacher centered. She also told me that I was going to need to work on a poem

from the textbook during the poetry unit, so we discussed, important goals and objectives, and

started to make some suggestions of how to build up and lead into that knowledge, or to scaffold

the lesson plan.

The next thing before writing the lesson plan is to review a book from last semester by

Paulin Gibbons, “Scaffolding Language and Scaffolding learning: Teaching second language

learners in the mainstream classroom,” The tells about scaffolding and it also has a lot of

information about student centered teaching. Additionally, it has a lot of ideas and

recommendations for activities that can help me with my lesson planning.

After I write and submit the lesson plan for the poetry unity, the next piece of evidence

that I will collect is the data from this project submitted prior to teaching the lesson and look at
the scores from the rubric and feedback from the instructor on how to improve my lesson plan

including information about how to make the lesson more student centered and also about

including elements not just from the lesson and the activities but also from the assessments about

how to make sure that the students are being properly engaged and asked to participate in ways

that are meaningful, relevant and connected to all the parts of the lesson.

Then I will teach the lesson on Friday. February 22nd and I will video record the lesson

and gain feedback from my peers. I can analyze the video myself to see if the lesson had good

flow, if the activities were sequential and aligned and how well the students were able to

participate and follow along on the activities. I can also evaluate and measure how much I am

leading and explaining and how often the students are able to work and participate on their own.

Through the video I can see better what different groups are discussing and analyze how well

they are intellectually engaged and making use of the essential question of what jobs or

occupations have importance and why?

The last piece of evidence I will collect after they teach the lesson is an anonymous

survey asking students how comfortable they felt to work in partners, in groups and on their own.

I will also ask them if they were able to follow the lesson, what things were unclear and if parts

of the lesson helped them to make sense of activities that came after. I will also ask them if they

thought the lesson was relevant to their lives and what parts of the lesson were useful to them. I

will have them submit the answers to the survey questions without a name on the paper, and to

please be honest and that there are no wrong answers and that their feedback is welcome.
4. Collaboration

I will collaborate with my mentor teacher every Wed., after the third period class to

discuss goals and lesson plans, ways that things can be improved, making revisions for things

that need to be added or changed. She is very helpful with suggestions about improvements for

planning and scaffolding, ways to differentiate instruction, arranging partner work and group

work, finding appropriate assessments for the lessons, using technology in the classroom, which

materials and resources are appropriate.

The department meets once a week and sometimes we discuss what materials should be

covered and what the learning goals and objectives are, and this is very important when planning

the lesson that it falls in line with the scope and sequence of the curriculum.

I will find ways to take improve the scores and use the feedback that I receive from my

field. She always makes me a list of suggestions and that always helps me to think about what I

need to improve. Similarly, I rely on feedback from this course and rubric scores from my TK20

assignments to help me know which areas need improvement. I will collaborate with my Mentor

teacher on ways that I improve the domains that I am not proficient in.

Students are also the most important collaborators in checking in understanding and feedback

about lessons. We frequently use exit tickets to find out how well students understand a lesson

or what parts of the lesson they found most useful, but it would also be beneficial for this

assignment to collect anonymous surveys which will provide better and more honest data than an

exit ticket with a student’s name.

5. Impact of Personal and Professional Identity

 I immigrated to the United States from Mexico when I was 15 years old. I had very little

English and doing high school in English was very difficult for me. I have 3 sons who were born

here in the United States. I spoke Spanish to them when they are born, but already they are

speaking more English than Spanish. The way they have learned and experienced both English

and Spanish is different from my experience. I think in my Spanish language arts classroom

there might be learners like me, who learned English late, as well as learners like my sons, who

were exposed to English earlier in life; in other words, how recently they have immigrated

directly relates to their Spanish language level. When I think about the way that my sons

experience with learning language and acculturating to life in the United States is different from

my own, it makes me think about the diversity of learners who have immigrated or were

colonized, of students who are 1st 2nd or third generation, who are bilingual at home or who only

started learning English when they started school. I think it can be very easy to think that we

learn and experience Spanish the same, but in a Spanish language arts classroom I think it is

important to know it’s not always this way. For example, how much Spanish is being used,

spoken or read at home can make a difference in how hard lessons and assignments are for

individual students. This is why I would like to do a Spanish language survey in the first week of

school about, how much Spanish students use at home and in the community, if they read in

Spanish, watch TV in Spanish or in English, if their parents speak only Spanish or both Spanish

and English, if they are immigrants or born here, what generation their family immigrated, if

they started learning English since they were born or only when they started school. If they shop

at places that are in Spanish, what their school experience is like in a school where

announcements and assemblies are only in English, which classes they like.
 It is important to advocate for learners with different needs, language levels and

backgrounds, especially in a school that has a Spanish language arts program but is not officially

bilingual. How well my students are doing in other classrooms because of their English language

levels can affect how they feel about themselves as learners and how well they relate to Spanish

as well. I think it is important to talk to other Spanish speakers, and with students and parents

about our home lives and experiences to deepen understanding and perspective about how we

each experience culture, language, ways of knowing and learning. Therefore, it is important to

create a safe classroom space for students to be immigrants or be native or be bilingual,

multilingual, or barely learning English where the students learn to value different perspectives

and experiences and to work collaboratively, even though we have different backgrounds

experiences and language levels. It is equally important to scaffold lessons for language learners

and to make sure that the lessons allow for participation and engagement and that they have

plenty of opportunities to work with partners and in groups to use their Spanish and work with

learners from other backgrounds and language levels than they have on their own. I think that

having an understanding of myself and of my students as Spanish language learners can make a

difference in how well students are engaged in the learning material.