[Professional Growth Notes] PGN 10/26 (Made 2025 Fall Semester)

This was actually a rather hectic week, but overall I feel like I learned a lot. Getting to experience differentiation on a spectrum and in a variety of ways was extremely beneficial, I feel. It gave me an understanding of what it looks like when it works, when it doesn’t, as well as a reminder of how it can feel as a student to feel like things aren’t going how you want them to through no fault of your own. It also gave me an understanding of what it can be like for disabled students, to at least some minor extent, given that I have been confined to a special boot to be able to walk just about any distance, and that gave me a lot of perspective that will be useful as a teacher when it comes to designing my classrooms, my classes, and interacting with my students. I have also seen interesting differences in how different teachers handle their classes, in how they do tests differently, in how they handle discussions differently. I got a taste of a book test which I think was far too narrow and barely about the book as a whole, I got a taste of a more general but still rather detailed test that put too much stock on attendance and asked quite a bit while asking about, in some cases, seemingly random things, and I got to experience a pre-test which felt extremely easy and that had a purpose I had pretty much no clue about until class began. All of these were interesting opportunities to learn about what I like and don’t like in tests as well as chances to learn about my teachers and what they value in their students and their responses, be it memorization, critical thinking, responding in general, etc. You can tell a lot about a teacher by their tests, and I want to analyze my own tests to see what I am putting focus on, especially so that I can apply the tenets of differentiation to ensure that my students are all being accounted for and that nobody is being left behind by questions that skew in a way unfavorable to them.