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I am strong in visionary leadership. I spend a lot of time finding funding through grants to purchase technology for the school. In addition, I track the use of programs to see how they are used and if we should continue to spend our funds on those programs.
However, I could grow around excellence in professional practice. I find the educators in our school vary in their use of technology. I would like to find more ways to allocate time to teacher professional development in this area.

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Learner and Leader, need to improve designing

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Learner and Leader, need to improve designing

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As a brand new teacher, I have a lot to learn and I love the process of learning from other professionals. I hope to keep this open-minded, learning mindset for the entirety of my teaching career. Keeping up with current research feels exciting to me, and I love that it's a part of my job.

I also find a lot of joy in connecting students with leadership and outreach opportunities. I see this as an important aspect of my job as an educator who is trying to help students become more well-rounded and ready for the "real world". I also am very extroverted and I like making connections with community members.

Design feels harder for me, and I think I will simply need more experience before I feel like I am good at this. It seems attainable over time.

Allie Spring

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After this last year, I would definitely characterize myself as a collaborator. I co-teach three classes with an ESS teacher. We just finished our second year together and developed a good system for working with not only our in-class students, but those online as well. We discovered many ways to support students using technology. We also used many different types of apps and programs to engage students. We also discovered many helpful sites with our students when looking for ways to present topics. I also collaborate with other Algebra 2 teachers. We each discovered our own strengths in technology. For example, we referred to one as the Desmos queen as she became very skilled at creating assignments and assessments. I personally really developed my skill set with Google Slides and the different ways to use them to present information and assess students.

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I'm a great collaborator. I frequently work with colleagues from my school as well as from professional learning networks to continue to grow my own teaching practice. Additionally I've developed and implemented strategies for students to collaborate with one another and with me to enhance their learning capabilities. This is a something that I worked hard on over the course of the last school year as we spent the entire year online.

I need more help in the designing standards, which is why I'm excited about this course. I'm pretty good at adapting already designed courses to meet the learning needs of my students, but I need more practice designing learning activities from scratch.

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I think that during my first 9 years of teaching GATE students I developed as a Leader/Facilitator/Collaborator to help some independent, high ability students to learn interesting concepts and present their results. Some were intelligent, but not as self-motivated or maybe not very organized. I wasn't as successful with them.
Moving to HS to teach math and science meant that I had to work with a wider range of student ability and interest in the subjects. As someone who has worked as a Time Series Analyst before becoming a teacher, I experimented to find the most useful ways of teaching. It was interesting and challenging. Recently I have become a tennis coach. What I am focusing on is how to increase the level of ability, but even more than that, to focus on enjoyment of a sport so that they will continue to play the game in the future. The Citizen concepts match the coaching methods that I am using.
What I would like to do more of this year is the Designer concepts of 21st Century ISTE. Better design of projects can make it more interesting and even more important, widen the amount of experience and learning.

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Strength would definitely be the facilitator.  We are always teaching our students to take ownership of their learning.  I collaborate with another teacher to build co-curricular assignments that push the student to create a project that fulfills both disciplines requirements.  Creativity is encouraged.
Weakness would be in the design area.  I am not as tech-savvy as I need to be.  COVID and distance learning has definitely stretched me.  I am still learning.

Lorraine Zentz

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I believe I am a good collaborator and have good ideas which I bring to the table, but not a good designer. I have ideas but my downfall is the technology piece. I am getting better but still a struggle for me. It is an area I am always looking to improve in. I am also a long time learner and always looking for new ideas and twist to make material interesting and relevant.

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The ISTE standard that best describes me would be collaborator. I work a lot with my colleagues to create cross circular lessons for our students. There are many opportunities to learn from everyone in the classroom with open discussions and many times my students are teaching me new perspectives.

The ISTE standard that I need to work on is designer. I feel that there are many times in which I have a vision of what I would like a lesson or activity to look like and as I plan it I do my best to accommodate different levels learners and time  restrictions but when using in class, things get rocky. I would like to better develop my instructional design as well as implementation especially in the blended learning environment we seem to be in now.

DonnaMae Keys (June 2021)

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The ISTE standards that best characterize my abilities as a teacher are learner and collaborator. As a first year teacher, I must rely on both of these skills a lot, as I work to improve in other areas. I go out of my way to speak with my colleagues and students about ways to better improve my teaching or classroom environment. I know there is a lot to learn from the other teachers in my school. I have also stayed involved in researching and taking courses regularly to remind myself of best practices and to find some new strategies to try, which I have found to be more of a need in this weird world we have been living in recently.

I need to continue developing skills as an analyst. I think some of this comes with time, but I have found it difficult to use student data to make adjustments to my instruction that best supports my students.

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I think that I am an excellent collaborator and lean heavily on the experiences and knowledge that they have. I also believe that I am a good facilitator and encourage students well.
As far as weaknesses go, I often struggle with the technology side and staying on top of my learning curve.
Also, while I do consider myself a leader, I definitely find my advocating for technology lacking.

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I think the ISTE standard that best describes me, at least this year, is "Citizen". I feel like I'm always trying to situate my assignments and projects in the issues of the real world and build empathy in my students and promote civic engagement. Sometimes I know I could do a better job, but that's what I feel I've been focusing on, with a lot of collaboration happening too.

I think even though I know the importance of analyzing and using student data, it's still been a challenge for me to make time to do this, especially this year. Improving my grading and feedback practices has been on my mind for several years and this year I've just struggled with it.

Sarah Groenwald

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The ISTE strength that best characterizes myself is #2: Leader. Many colleagues come to me with questions regarding curriculum and instruction. I am a member of our Building Leadership Team responsible for advising administration on best practices in many facets of education. The standard I need the most work on is #3: Citizen. While I make strong connections with students naturally and build positive relationships. I know that I often skip over digital literacy and media fluency. I find myself often assuming that they know more about technology and media because they are so exposed to it, but playing on their phone is so different than using a more powerful machine to access media in an analytical way.

Daniel Knudsen

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The standard that best describes me is the ISTE Designer. I love to design curriculum and lessons for my students. I try hard to design authentic, student-driven activities that recognize differently styles of learning and promote unique perspectives and funds of knowledge. I am lucky to teach in a building where I am allowed to use inquiry based and project based learning opportunities to help my students grow. I am continuing to find ways to better suit the needs of my striving and excelling students and accommodate different learner needs and learning styles.

Alison Robinson

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As a new teacher, I would have to say that my biggest strength is being a Learner. On many occasions both this year and last, I ask my coworkers for advice on lessons to continuously improve my teaching skills. I love to learn and consistently look toward new things to put into my teaching skillset.

The standard that I believe I could get better at is being a Designer. Just due to lack of experience, I think that my skills to design authentic learning activities is not where I'd like it to be. Recently, I've tried to implement more project-based units/ activities into my science classes just to give myself a little more experience in facilitating a PBL type classroom. Next year, we'll be running a PBL specific course and I'd like to learn a little more about designing innovative learning environments to support active learning in the classroom.

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Leader: I do my best to lead by example and am engaged broadly in my field.  I have taken risks with leadership positions and try to lead colleagues both in my building as well as in venues outside my immediate work environment.
Designer: While I strive to create lessons for and by learners, I struggle.  I know this is an area in which I need to improve, as I believe it will pay off in the long run with student success rates increasing.

-Doug Hodum

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Overall, I would say that my biggest strength as an educator is my ability to collaborate with others. Whether it is my students, co-workers, or other professionals, I thrive in an environment where I can discuss ideas as a group. I feel that I not only bring my own unique perspectives to the table, but I am also able to see the best in others and incorporate their ideas into my own visions.

The thing I would like to work on the most would be becoming a better designer. I often struggle to come up with unique lesson plans on my own, and instead choose to modify other people's lesson plans to fit my own goals. I would love to feel confident enough to consistently create my own lesson plans while not taking too long to do so. I would also love to continue to learn how to incorporate real-world problems and situations into my classroom to better prepare my students for life after school and teach them how to think critically.

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5.  I want to learn more about to be an effective Designer...I want to refine my PBLs to be more authentic, to be self-driven by the learners to support them in learning to be more aligned with their own interests, yet true to content standards.  I want to support learners as they discover themselves and their own passions  while understanding their individual needs and differences...

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5.  I want to learn more about to be an effective Designer...I want to refine my PBLs to be more authentic, to be self-driven by the learners to support them in learning to be more aligned with their own interests, yet true to content standards.  I want to support learners as they discover themselves and their own passions  while understanding their individual needs and differences...

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In the remote learning world we all experienced earlier this year--it became clear to me that many students rely on extrinsic motivation and grades while the love of learning and self direction were somewhat lacking in certain sectors of my students....I want to design projects that will engage and inspire students to fully invest in their own educations...

Jessica Heady (July 2020)

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The standard that I think best describes me is the Equity and Citizenship Advocate -  as a school psychologist, I am always tasked with ensuring that students are receiving every right to learn and succeed.

Where I need to develop is being a Visionary Planner. I tend to organize and conceptualize what is already in motion - learning to plan for the future is where I tend to rely on my team.

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1.  Facilitate and inspire student learning creativity.

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1.  Facilitate and inspire student learning creativity.

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I think this is an area I have improved greatly on as a teacher as compared to when I first began teaching (which was quite awhile ago...).  Particularly with my STEAM classes, I have had students create things that I would have never though of on my own.  I do a much better job of letting runaway horses run than I did earlier in my career. And it makes teaching much more enjoyable for me, and hopefully makes the learning more fun for the students!

Joe Frey (July 2020)

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6c

Create learning opportunities that challenge students to design & critical thinking to innovate and solve problems.
I think the best way for adult learners to learn is to do.  I try to challenge my students to think beyond the immediate problem. Think about bigger pictures: who does this affect, how significant is the problem, will a solution solve it for everyone or only in some situations.
I want to be able to develop a plan to implement this kind of thinking that can be applied to any PBL course or situation

-Steven Hills July 2020