Dana Omer_Telling my story 1

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
TED 690
Telling My Story
Dana Omer
04/14/2019

[This assignment documents and reflects on my journey as a teacher and how my experiences

relate to the 6 TPE domains. Many of the reflections are taken from my current teaching

position, as well as from my three years as a substitute teacher and my student teaching

experiences.]
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Progress toward competencies:

Domain A of the California Teacher Performance Expectations addresses making subject matter

comprehensible to students. TPE 1A states that multiple subject candidates demonstrate the

ability to teach the state- adopted academic content standards to students. They understand how

to deliver a comprehensive program of rigorous instruction in Reading, Writing, Speaking and

Listening, and Language within standards that establish a progression of increasing complexity.

They strategically plan and schedule instruction that ensures that students meet or exceed the

standards (California Teaching Performance Expectations, 2013). I believe that I am making

significant progress toward meeting this expectation. I have been in my own classroom for 2

months but have been substitute teaching for 3 years. I have gotten several comments from

students, including high school students, stating that I really helped them understand the content

through my easy-to-understand explanations and scaffolding strategies. I think there is always

more to learn and now that I am teaching second grade, a grade I have not taught before, I see

that learning how to make content accessible to students is an ongoing process because not all

students learn the same. Even two second grade classes may differ in learning styles from one

year to the next, so it is important to continue learning how to make content accessible to all

students.

Strengths and Needs

I believe, out of all the domains, I am very strong in making subject matter comprehensible,

assessing student learning, planning instruction and designing learning experiences, and

developing as a professional educator. I have a pretty good concept of the development of

children and age-appropriate subject matter which helps me plan instruction that is appropriate

and easy-to-understand. I also have a very good understanding of assessments and progress
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monitoring, including having a very organized system of tracking student progress and data. I

also really enjoy professional development and take developing myself as a professional

educator very seriously. Areas that I know I can improve on include domains C and E, engaging

and supporting students in learning, and creating and maintaining effective environments for

student learning. The reason I believe I could improve in these areas is because I have noticed,

through my own self-reflection, that sometimes I struggle with timing. I will be engaged in a

lesson with my students and realize that it is taking much longer than I anticipated to complete,

or I will plan lessons that my students were able to complete in much quicker than I anticipated.

Luckily, I always have back-up plans for these cases, but I would like to improve my timing in

the classroom. I would also like to see myself improve on implementing more engaging

activities. There are many things that I am required to teach at my school, in a way that fits their

mission, that I don’t find to be very engaging. I would like to spend some time thinking about

how I can make the lessons more exciting without steering away from the mission and structure

of the school.

TPE competencies

One of the competencies I would like to focus on in Domain A includes an emphasis on writing.

Many students, even in second grade, struggle with the main foundations of writing, like

capitalization, periods, etc. My current school puts a great deal of focus on reading and math

skills. My current lesson plans provide for many opportunities for students to demonstrate their

reading abilities and every morning is begun with a speaking and listening activity. We do cover

a lot of writing, but I would like to focus on more constructive writing within my reading groups.
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Rational

The second artifact, after this Telling My Story reflection, I chose to demonstrate my knowledge

of delivering instruction that is comprehensible to students is a lesson plan I wrote for a

kindergarten class regarding using and understanding interrogatives. The lesson, according to

my host teacher and NU supervisor was very well-written and the execution of the lesson was

very successful. Students were engaged and performed very well on the summative assessment.

The third artifact I chose to include were pictures of student work from the summative

assessment for the interrogative lesson. I included one image from a student with learning

disabilities to show the variation of student performance. This student’s assessment was also

used as a guide for what I can reteach or teach differently in the future. The last artifact I chose

to include was a literature review about an article discussing an effective strategy for solving

math word-problems. This article was so informative and innovative. I am actually going to

implement the strategy into my own classroom because I found it to be so intriguing and helpful.

Making content comprehensible to students includes finding a way for students to be able to

confidently solve math word-problems. I know that many students struggle with this concept,

whether they have learning disabilities or not, many students fear the math word-problem due to

its complexity and the need for students to think cognitively.

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Reference

California Teaching Performance Expectations. (2013). Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

Retrieved from https://www.ctc.ca.gov/docs/default-source/educator-prep/standards/adopted-

tpes-2013.pdf