Personal Professional Development - Essay Example

Reflective Journal I consider being given the opportunity to write about my personal experiences regarding this module to be a special chance to reflect upon my learning experiences and develop a greater insight about the lessons I have learned during the past semester. Indeed, this was not an easy module for me to complete but I my desire to work with children, which I came to realize a few years ago, led me to solider on and pull it together in order to achieve the objectives of the class. “Reflecting on practice enables practitioners to discover, rediscover or understand the complex range of knowledge, skills and understanding they have and to develop and use the intellectual and emotional power within themselves to try and improve their situation”(Ghaye and Ghaye 1998). A few years ago, I had absolutely no experience when it came to the topic of childcare. Hence my previous reluctance to delve headlong into the studies pertaining to it. But over the years, situations developed that allowed me to put what I had been learning in class into practice. would never have developed the skills necessary to complete my class requirements. Eventually, I was thrust into the middle of working with children in 3 different setting which motivated me to further challenge myself to learn more about child care. The decision about what my college degree would be was now clear to myself and my family. Although I was anxious about my classes and had some jiiters about enrolling, my family members did their best to allay my fears and encourage me to succeed. Rmeinding me that I had to challenge myself in order to become the best person that I could be and ensure that I would eventually achieve all my dreams and ambitions. However, their encouragement and pep talks were being outweighted at every turn by my fear of making the wrong career decision. I needed to be reassured about my degree choice so I began to research the job market for my course. Little did I know that I was not helping myself by doing that.As Dwyer and Wynn argued; ‘Young adults are often disappointed when they do eventually enter the labour market, and experience uncertainties previously associated with the end of compulsory schooling.’ (p.334) I began to wonder if I would be wasting my time by further pursuing my degree. Afterall, I may still have made the wrong career decision and end-up with a useless degree. As usual, my family was there to support me during my time of doubt. I was reminded that the course that I decided upon was more of a calling than a lucrative career. They had only encouraging words and positive feedback for me about the choices I had already made. Reminding me that I could always the exception to what the media considers a rule when it came to job opportunities. It was pointed out to me that the DLHE report (2012) shows that 88.6% of teaching graduates were employed within 6 months in the education sector. As a student who was beginning to fill with self - doubt, that piece of information was encouragement enough for me. I finally found my reason to forget about employment fears and just throw myself into my classes and training. After all, a well-trained teacher will be highly prized and sought after in the job market. I just had to keep reminding myself of the wise words of Judith (2011,p. 43) ‘Resilience requires your commitment to stay involved, some degree of control or influence and a send of personal challenge to develop’. If I wanted to become employable in the future, I needed to concentrate on developing all the skills necessary for myself as an educator. Thanks to this module, I was able to achieve a greater sense of ease in terms of my development as an education practitioner. The past two years have been such an enlightening experience for me. Thanks to the patience, guidance, and understanding of the people involved in the lessons and training session, I managed to reinvent myself asan educator of the future. The skills that I developed during this period of time is something that I consider remarkable, most specially because I had absolutely no previous background that could help me relate to the class. Prior to attending this class, I was a typical young adult who had difficulty planning anything, much less sticking to it. I can now proudly say that I have outgrown that phase of my life. I now know how to plan things in order to gain the most desired effect out of a given situation. This is something that I learned about myself as I began to complete my class work more and more ahead of time, thus allowing me more opportunities to double check myself and plug any loopholes in my work. I believe that the more effecient I become at planning things, the more I will be able to address the needs of the children under my care. Most recently, I have become increasingly involved in the daily planning of childrens needs in a controlled setting, thus further proving my ability to better plan for a given situation. Skills You Need (2007) states that interpersonal skills are vital when seeking employment and may be the single most important factor for many recruiters. Now this was new problem that I had to overcome. Being a young adult, I have yet to develop the communication skills that will grab the attention my the adults and people around me. But that is not to say that I will never achieve that high level of communication. I have been privileged to improve upon my communication skills while being trained under this module. Having to speak to parents, tutors, and other persons in authority on a daily basis has forced me to challenge myself to come up to their expected level of intellectual communication or fail to make myself understood. By pushing myself to learn beyond the contents of the module, referencing other related books, articles, and the internet in order to help me better understand my lessons gave me the edge that I was looking for in communicating with other people. Although I have improved my communication skills immensely, I realize that I still have a long way to go in terms of being able to communicate in such a way that I will be able to influence the way of thinking of other people. I will only be able to do that after I develop a certain level of work proficiency. More importantly, I can only convince people of my communication skills once I carry a better aura of confidence about me in the future. In hindsight, I would have to admit that my past life experiences directly affected my confidence on terms of believing that I could achieve the end goals of this module. I began this module with a degree of of uncertainty in relation to my presentation and communication skills, as well as worries as to whether I could work with a team in class. Constant distractions in my life affected my concentration. Needless to say, there was truly a point in time when I thought that I would not be able to cope with the demands of the class. By practicing due diligence and asking for the help my my tutor when I needed it the most, I was able to overcome the obstacles that existed for me. I began to develop hope because I realized that I was actually well equipped and dedicated to completing this module. Therefore, my lack of confidence had no place in my new world. I was now extremely happy about having reached this particular stage of my training. I focused strongly on this module and let the problems slip away. Peal (1998) stated “Believe in yourself Have faith in your abilities without a humble but reasonable confidence in your Sown powers you cannot be successful or happy.” Now all I have to work on is my sense of self confidence and further improvement of my communication skills by becoming more involved during class discussions. I have always been aware of the challenges that I would be facing in class. One of these fears was my fear of public speaking. Class presentations were always very hard for me because of my high stress level during these events. Anxiety was always my enemy when I needed to make a class presentation. I was never confident enough that I would meed the presentation standards and was always hard on myself because I always expected to fail because I knew that a higher level of presentations was expected of me as the module progressed. Eventually, I learned that I needed to view my apprehensions as challenges that I needed to overcome. This was going to be the only way that I could improve myself during class presentations.I took the advice of Dennison And Kirk (1990) “do, review, learn, apply” to heart. I have come a very long way since my first class presentation when it comes to its effectiveness and applicability to the audience. I had to ensure I worked well with my group by sharing ideas .I made sure to study Flemings model (1987), sometimes I referred to VARK learning styles, and did whatever was necessary to make sure that my part of the presentation would be a success. I prepared the presentation according to these learning styles by applying pictures, videos and hand-outs to the audience. I received positive feedback from my peers who stated I gave out suitable information and was a good speaker, as opposed to my image of being a quiet student. Receiving good feedback from my peers on my presentation skills has helped me realize that I am well on my way to becoming an effective speaker. My effective presentations helped me gain knowledge about the topic, learning styles and boosted my communication and confidence skills more. I believe the skills I gained throughout the course of the module has prepared me for potential job interviews. I know that I have a very long way to go in terms ot fully developing the skills required of a future effective educator According to the Skills audit (see appendix) my teamwork is one of my strengths. This was always evident during team presentations as my team always performed well and received good grades. The audit also showed that I had strong decision making skills while my organizational skills can do with some improvement. In terms of research, I have developed my skills in this area quite well thanks to my use of the ICT facilites at the university such as UEL Plus. The audit also reminded me that I needed to develop my communication skills and self-confidence. I have alreay made a mental note to continue developing and improving in my problem areas as I near the completion of my degree. Word Count = 1827 Read More