Professional Goal Statement: Strategies In The Classroom

Personal Goal Statement

I have been an educator for two years and plan to spend many more years in the classroom. My professional goals as an educator is to continue to grow and develop as an educator, make a difference in children’s lives, and be able to advocate for all children to have a fair access to a quality of education. This Master’s program will help me shape these goals by providing rigorous instruction with intention on focusing on how learning is taught and crafted during the 21st century. Being a young educator myself and teaching 4th and 5th graders these past couple of years, I understand how important it is to not only craft engaging lessons but tweak and keep critiquing your lessons based on student data. In this program,

The three most effective beliefs I believe in are B.F Skinner’s “Reinforcement Theory”, Lev Vygotsky’s “Zone of Proximal Development”, and John Sweller’s “Cognitive Load Theory”. In college, I resonated with these theories and these theorists when writing and learning about them. However, being in the classroom these past two years and being able to say I have applied these strategies in the classroom shows how effective these theories truly are. I have had the privilege of moving up with my students these past couple of years. The behaviors I have seen from last year to this year have improved so much simply because of using Skinner’s “Reinforcement Theory”. I have been able to work with my students on using positive consequences like the students working together towards a certain reward like free time on their chromebooks or a bigger event we do as a large school event called Fun Friday. On the other hand, if the action the student performs is negative, they are held accountable for their actions and disciplined accordingly. As I’ve continued to use this theory in the classroom, it is leading my students to self-regulate their actions more and try to work towards more positive consequences. I’ve also used Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development in my classroom multiple times. As I have mentioned before, at my school we are committed to closing the achievement gap at school. When I first began to work with my students, I had to take the time to learn what my students could do on their own. Every student was at a different pace. However, after learning and knowing what my students could do, I began to pair them up when we were doing collaborative work in the classroom and students were then not only able to work together, but teach and learn in a way they could understand. This also allowed me to look at data and see which students needed