1. Professional Growth Standards V and VI Descriptive Examples
Daniel Herschler
Standard V
 reflects on own strengths and weaknesses and modifies instruction accordingly
 analyzes the success of efforts undertaken during the professional growth years of the cycle;
initiates reflective conversations with PDP support system team, other peers, staff
development teacher (SDT), or supervisory staff
It is part of my personal style and rather meticulous approach to the
effectiveness of my teaching that I often spend a lot of time scrutinizing and
evaluating my own techniques and strategies as an educator. Going through the
process of an observation year has afforded me several new opportunities to receive
some important feedback from my colleagues and supervisors, and then attempt to
apply it to my work with the students.
For example, after my last observation from my department chair, Laura
Parsons, we discussed some methods to bring my students beyond merely participating
and earning high marks in my Honors Modern World History class. Often, my
students in Honors World are taking notes, completing their assignments, and
performing well on assessments. However, that does not always imply active
engagement from students in the class activity. Laura and I discussed the possibility
of more frequently shifting from my style of direct instruction in Honors World to an
approach where I could apply more cooperative assignments and project in order to
inspire more active engagement from my students.
Ever since taking on Honors Modern World again last year, I was always
interested in finding a way to cover the vast amount of information, while also
encouraging genuine interest from the students in the subject matter. My
tentativeness of pursuing a more interactive style in the room had generally been a
product of a fear that if I cut or minimized my lectures, then my students wouldn’t
get “enough” information, and consequently not perform as well on summative
assessments. Since Laura explained to me her own teaching style in her AP World
class, I feel much more confident that I would not be corrupting the material by
taking a more creative approach to instruction, but actually enhancing it.

2. Laura and I also discussed how to revise some of my organizational practices to
make more use of powerpoint, which actually appeals to me. I have already begun to
reorganize many of my lessons and lectures into powerpoint format, much the way I
already do with my AP Government classes. I am anxious to apply these practices
throughout next year, since I will have the rare opportunity to teach AP Government
and Honors Modern World a second consecutive year.
Standard VI
 engages in dialogue, problem solving, planning, or curricular improvement with other
teachers in the same grade level or subject discipline within the school or across the district
 participates in required staff, team, committee, department meetings, and parent
conferences
I’ve also enthusiastically contributed to department and team efforts to
collaborate because I believe that it enriches my own instruction and provides
continuity across classes for students (especially important since our students
generally switch from one teacher to another at the end of a semester). My Modern
World History team has worked extremely well in a collaborative manner to create
scores of assessments, review sheets, and re-assessments based on many hours of
reflective discussion about students’ capabilities, test scores, and interests.
Likewise, I have especially enjoyed working with our team leader Amy Pollin because
she incorporates a creative and innovative style in her classroom that I intend to
integrate more into my own instruction model. While every teacher has their own
personal style that works best for their students, I firmly believe that it is essential
to learn as much as I can from your peers in order to grow as a professional and
enhance my methods and strategies. For instance, Amy gave me a unique idea to
begin our Industrialization that I successfully modified and incorporated into my
classroom simply because I wanted to try something new with my students. I find
that when I can step out of my comfort zone into a creative area, my students are
usually more inclined to feel encouraged to do the same.
At a departmental level, we participated in a really useful and interesting
series of activities that encouraged us to observe our peers and evaluate examples of
engagement in the classroom. The general idea was to observe three different
people, fill out an analysis sheet (focusing on examples of engagement), turn the
analysis sheet in, and then discuss the feedback at the next department meeting. I

3. took the opportunity to observe at least one course that I do not teach- Matt
Winter’s Honors NSL class. Matt’s style of actively and continuously probing his
students with thought-provoking questions provided me with feedback that I know will
be useful as I re-evaluate how I want to approach my Modern World History class
next year in order to get my students more personally invested in the subject
matter.
I am fortunate enough to teach in a department and school that encourages
cooperation, collaboration, and individual professional growth and development. During
the next few years, I intend to take advantage of this environment in an attempt to
take more chances and step further outside the box (and my comfort zone) in order
to find new and innovative ways to make my students successful.