Individualized Professional Development Plan

Name: Jennifer Whitaker Major: Elementary Education

Start with your WHY: Why are you pursuing this degree? What do you want the outcome to be? How are you going to work
toward making that outcome possible? **Is the outcome directly related to your WHY?
Why: I’m pursuing this degree to be able to impact future generations to the best of my ability. I’ve always had such a strong

a love for children, and choosing early/elementary education was such a natural choice to make.

What: I want to be able to have a positive, lasting impact on the students that I will come in contact with. Today’s youth will

be leading tomorrow, and I want to do whatever I can to help give them a foundation of knowledge, confidence, and

compassion to do so.

How: I’ll work to soak up as much information, as many lessons, and as many experiences as I can while pursuing this degree.

TIMEFRAME Personal goals: Professional goals:

(e.g. Positional goals, membership to organizations, exploring (e.g. Gaining further skills, advancing knowledge is specific
opportunities, etc) areas, Memberships in Professional Associations etc.)

Next Semester  Become more involved in SEA

 Stay in contact with past boss and work on a schedule for  Look for possible summer internship at a kid’s camp or a
the future full-time summer tutoring job
 Start working in tandem with the new teacher at work on
lesson plans
 Next year  Get a job during the school year, ideally at another early  Gain experience working with children in a fully academic
childhood education center or one tutoring elementary- setting
aged children

Individual Professional Development Plan Template

Assets and Provocations
Planned Activities Objective of Development Alignment to Vision, How activity impacts student
Activity Mission, Core Values, learning
Major, or Minor

Required
knowledge/skills  Continuously be
 Read at least one gaining new  The Excitement of  I will have a better
Consider: new article a knowledge in the Teaching, Learning, understanding of my
month regarding field to best prepare and Mentoring role in their education
●required competencies: educational and how best to fulfil
like COE Core Value myself for when I
aspects. join it officially. that role.
Proficiencies,
Professional Standards  Find new areas/parts
for your content or of the field that
licensure, intrigue me or that I
find myself
becoming passionate
about.

Assets/Strengths  Minor in Creative  The better I understand

Writing literature/writing, the
Consider:  Capitalize on my  Build on a better I can teach it to
creative writing foundation, that my
●your views
●recent assessments
●other people’s views
Provocations/Growth
Consider:
●gaps in knowledge/skills
●opportunities on the
horizon
●what specific actions will
help you to progress in
your role?
Individual Professional Development Plan Activity Log
skills teachers helped me my future students
 Continue to form, in a way that
figure out can benefit my
exactly what my future students.
strengths are 
 Study abroad  Expand my view of  The Appreciation of  Once my worldview is
 Shadow local education by seeing Diversity and expanded, I can help the
teachers how it is viewed it Similarity students expand theirs,
other parts of the  The Challenge of as well, by educating
world. Integrated Practice them on different
 Gain practical and Collaboration cultures through first-
knowledge of how hand experience/stories.
classrooms are run  The more time I spend
daily and pick up on in a classroom now, the
aspects that I do or more comfortable I will
do not like from be when I eventually
what I witness. have my own.
(1)
Description of professional development activity completed
1. Go back to work at Ohana (early
childhood learning center I started
working at senior year)
2. Get a summer tutoring job at home
3. Work at a kid’s summer camp,
preferably an academic one
4. Go back to Ohana over Christmas break
5.
Total PD Hours
(2)
Timeframe
June (ended up being March)
2020 - August 2020
June 2021 – August 2021 or
June 2022 – August 2022
June 2021 – August 2021 or
June 2022 – August 2022
December 2020 – January
2021
(3)
Connection to your stated objective
This job gives me useful, hands-on experience working with
children. During the summer the focus is more on fun
experiments and experiences than during the normal school
year, so it allowed think creatively about how to get the
lessons across to the kids.
This would give me more experience working with kids in a
fully academic setting. Tutoring throughout high school gave
me this, but now I would have two years of studying
Elementary Education to help me.
This would give me experience working with a larger group
of kids in a possibly overwhelming situation to prepare me
for an actual classroom, and hopefully I would also get to
help teach them in a way.
This would allow to me to continue building connections
with the students there and to keep exploring early education
~1,760 (working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for the 11 months detailed)