[Professional Growth Notes] PGN 11/17 (Made 2025 Fall Semester)

My EdTPA went poorly. Very poorly. It went wrong both because of things in my control and things outside of my control. I made the mistake of thinking that my students had the reading level of 6th graders instead of being far below reading level, I was unprepared for them to push back against me more than the other teachers, and I did not prepare as early as I should have. In terms of things I couldn't control, the BSU Printers decided that they hated me and what was supposed to be an assignment that was 90% on paper turned into one that was 90% online and with that shift, the quality of the assignment massively dropped. Every day was a struggle as I adjusted the goalposts and the requirements and my hopes, trying to find a way to salvage what I had, and honestly the fact that I got anything at all done that week amazes me given how badly tech messed with me. I couldn’t even use the smartboard on the final day because of a school-wide issue. Overall, yet again, I found myself teaching at a disadvantage. I also am still something of an outsider to my students since the other immersive learning students were there before me and have taught more (they are on about 3 weeks of teaching time to my 1 and frankly I am upset that last year I taught a single day and they get to teach weeks worth of plans, but that is neither here nor there.) I had no real relationship with the students and had to start from scratch with them because they were used to everyone else. I had to flex my improvisational skills, and while I think you saw perhaps the best day of the lesson plan, you also saw the best of my improvisation since I had to change things up a good bit and because I got questioned about the importance of what I was learning despite the students never questioning the others. I suppose this is why we are supposed to teach lessons leading up to this, and I wish there had been potential for me to, but Mr. Young and the other immersive learning students take all the time, and I am left with nothing because I don’t even know when the immersive learning students will be teaching and because Mr. Young’s classes aren’t really classes so much as him reading aloud, having students watch CNN10, and do some quiz or another. I feel like I’m on the backfoot, but at the same time, if I have been thrown in the deep end, I can at least learn from it, I can at least grow my skills at being flexible, I have learned lessons in flexibility and this lesson plan went better than it would have had I prepared it last year when I was even more rigid in my thinking, so at least I know I have grown in that regard, and I think in the end I got something of value out of my students and that they did learn something, and that’s honestly more than I feared would happen.