More so than any other profession, teachers and administrators take on many hours of professionals developmentin order to stay ahead of the trends in education. Professional development is what helps educators to continue to be effective in their classrooms and schools. AASL Standard 4.2 calls for librarians “to make a commitment to the profession by participating in professional growth and leadership opportunities…[and to make] plans for ongoing professional growth.” During SLM 501, Administration and Leadership, I created a professional development plan that outlines my own leadership qualities and discusses my plan for professional development.
The professional development plan includes objectives such as increasing circulation, collaboration with classroom teachers, and improving technology use in the classroom. These three objectives are the strength of this plan, for they are reasonable objectives that are crucial to my professional practice as an educator. Increasing the circulation numbers in the library will show result in more and more students utilizing the books and resources within the library and in turn increase student achievement. Collaborating with classroom teachers will advocate the value of my position in the library, and then also help teachers to be more effective in their classrooms. Improving technology use in the classroom brings the 21st century to the classroom and will provide students with a better and more relevant education.
This plan will benefit both teachers and students because it will provide opportunities to create more opportunities for collaboration, which in turn will provide students with a better education and improve their successes in school. I am a strong advocate for teacher collaboration. I truly believe that if in teachers working with each other and their library media specialist, not only wills canitonly benefit their own teaching practices, but it will also benefit the students as well. During my internship, I found this assignment to be where I found my niche. In the future, I hope to be able to implement more professional development sessions with teachers and also work with them on individual lessons and unit plans.