Professional Development Interview

My interview this week for my professional development interview was with my host teacher for this quarter. Mrs. Barb Diaz is currently a kindergarten teacher at Barber Language Academy in Rockford. She has taught for almost 30 years in the Rockford School District, Head Start, Spectrum, and as an adjunct teacher with Rockford University. While also being my aunt, she has been my mentor these many years and has displayed a passion for teaching children that I have found unmatched. Her classroom style is a bit unconventional as she is trying new ways to meet the developmentally appropriate needs of her Kindergarten classrooms. Mrs. Diaz has implemented certain practices to proactively change the behavior atmosphere in her classroom with the …show more content…
Diaz’s classroom management is so preventative with the strategies already discussed and with varying difficulty in her stations that behavior issues are not a regular site without probable cause. She does a lot of 1:1 discussions with any child who needs behavior addressed. Sometimes she uses a contract scenario, where the student and herself or another teacher set up a behavior plan with the stated reward or consequence. A final level for her before involving administration is a meeting with her parents. Typically the parent is kept in the loop of how a child is doing in class, but to be addressed on a negative tone can be fearsome in this culture. Parents are brought into the situation to help to have a cohesive behavior plan that transitions form home to school with proper feedback in helping the child be independent in controlling their behavior. “It works well for most families and is a tactic I may only have to incorporate a few times,” she …show more content…
Incorprating a team effort when supporting a change in student behavior helps the child realize it’s a situation that they will have support even outside the classroom and with younger or older peers possibly in observance. This strategy tells the student, the school, as a whole, supports you and will help you make choices that are positive for you and others. This same team effort with teachers of the same or multiple grades is also used in their bullying plan before the administration is involved. I compared it to a half step approach to an RtI behavior plan between tier 1 and 2 and Mrs. Diaz agreed. She added that the fifth grade mentorship program they utilize not only supports the culture of family values but also broadens the student’s social circles and behavior skills throughout the