Being a teacher means being a lifelong learner. Not one student is the same as another. A teacher needs to be able to change and adapt the way they do things in order to accommodate the different learning styles from year to year. This is why it is so important for teachers to have a wealth of knowledge at their disposal. These are the reasons I do not want to stop here. I want to continue to find ways to learn about what is important for me and my students. The three things I want to do to continue my education is to find and listen to more webinars, read books about autism in the classroom and visit educational conferences. 

 

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Learning through Webinars

Throughout the year I participate in professional development provided by my school. A majority of my professional developments has come from my college courses at Michigan State. I am going to miss learning new information, tips and tricks. For this reason, I want to seek out my own training videos for professional development. There is so much to learn out there. The reason I chose webinars is beaus they are a cost-effective way to learn new information. Most webinars are free and the ones that aren't only require a yearly membership to the website. Websites like edweb.net and ascd.org provide free webinars for teachers and have a collection of thousands of previous webinars that you go watch too. It allows you to search for any topic you may be looking for. The hard part is that I need to learn what webinars will be the most effective. This will take some research. There is a lot of information out there, but it might not always meet the age or needs of my students. Therefore, I will have to make sure to read reviews and descriptions very carefully! 

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Autism in Preschool Classrooms

I am seeing more and more children my classroom with either diagnosed or undiagnosed ASD. They all present at different levels of functioning, but the tendencies are still very similar.  I have learned a lot over the years on how to interact and how to best support them, but I would like to learn more. I want to know how to help them in a general education classroom. Most of these students do not have a one-on-on so I am going to have to learn how to support them while also meeting the needs of the other children in the classroom. That is what I hope these books can help me with. I work in an inclusive classroom, so I am going to continue to work with children with special needs. I want to be well prepared and I know there is always more for me to know. For this reason, I have researched books to read that might be a good resource for me. The two I plan on reading are: Behavior Solutions in the Classroom by Beth Aune, Beth Burt and Peter Gennaro and The New Social Story Book by Carol Gray.

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Collaborating at Conferences

Last year I was given the opportunity to attend The Michigan Association for the Education of Young Child annual early childhood conference. It was amazing to see educators from all over Michigan come together to share their experiences with one another. I got to know teachers from a fellow Reggio Emilia School. We talked about how we incorporate this philosophy into our curriculum while still teaching to the state standards for kindergarten. I learned so much from them on how I could change or adapt what I am doing to give my students a better well-rounded education to prepare them for first grade in a public school. I would never have gotten that chance if I did not attend this conference. I would like to attend this conference again in the future and maybe even give my own presentation. I want to be able to share my teaching style and philosophy with other because of how passionate I am about it! I also need to learn about other conferences that would be beneficially for me to attend. Unfortunately, my school will not pay for us to go out of state, but I am sure Michigan has a variety of conferences that would be helpful to me. I just have to go out and find them! 

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​Being a life long learner means wanting to better yourself. All of these categories will help me to reach my goals by giving me more knowledge and confidence in the classroom. It will take a lot of motivation on my part to go out and do these things for myself, but I know that I will be able to accomplish all that I set out to do! 

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