Making Good Choices -- Blog 9

To no surprise, Eastern’s edTPA Candidate Support Resource aptly names “Making Good Choices,” is brimming with useful information and helpful tips. For instance, I did not know that I would need the students’, or students’ parents’ depending on how old the students are, and the other adults' consent before filming for my edTPA. However, in retrospect, it makes perfectly good sense.


“Making Good Choices” covers the three major parts of the edTPA with enough detail and useful information to make a candidate feel like they can pretend they are ready for their edTPA. The first part of the edTPA revolves around planning a lesson and was certainly the most helpful for me. Planning is not a strength of mine, but the more times I read through the Candidate Support Resource, the more ready I felt. It may all be a façade, surely, but hopefully, I will be able to plan well enough by the time my real edTPA begins. Only time will tell. The second part of the edTPA focuses on instruction, and how the candidate interacts with and instructs the students in his or her classroom. This is the section that I am least worried about. I have been teaching swim lessons and lifeguard training courses for many years, and coaching swim team for a spell now. I am confident in my ability to interact with students of all ages, perhaps overly confident and thus it will be my fatal flaw. The third and final part of the edTPA deals with assessment and how a teacher determines the learning of their students. Luckily for candidates like myself who dislike tests, the assessment may be formative or summative and may be formal or informal, so long as the students work on it individually, not in groups or pairs. As far as a high school or middle school class, having the students write a paper based off a, or a number of, prompt(s) seems to the best means of assessment.

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