Professional Educator Professionalism Essay Example for Free

Professional Educator Professionalism Essay Professional development is an important aspect of an educator’s life. Without continuous development, there will be no true development. To enhance professionalism, I will look for trainings and seminars enhancing my skills and participate in these activities. I can benefit from such seminars and trainings in two ways. One is by learning more about educator professionalism. Secondly, I can network with other people and learn from their experiences as educators. Another action item that I can include would be to consult books, websites and blogs on educator professionalism. By reading the experiences of other educators, I can also take a look at my own experiences and apply the lessons I learn. A realistic time line for monitoring my progress is one year. During this time, I will keep a personal journal detailing the lessons I learned and the progress I am making in connection with developing professionalism. Through this, I can have an empirical tool for assessing my professional growth. This journal can in fact be online through a blog. This way, I can effectively use technology in enhancing my productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness in being an educator. Reflection and Professional Improvement As part of the journaling and blogging process, I can use reflection. I can look at my daily, weekly and monthly experiences and reflect on my progress. Reflection is a very powerful tool because it allows me to look back and take a look at my own professional practice, my own beliefs, my experiences and think about how these things affect my thinking, my belief system and the way that I do my work. With the aid of my journal, I can write down my thoughts. This way, I can benefit more greatly from my reflections and make necessary adjustments if needed. Reflections, after all, are worth nothing if I do not make the necessary actions to make improvements. With reflection, I can also be satisfied with the result of my efforts. I can be further encouraged with the results of my efforts. The Importance of a Professional Growth Plan An old adage says that those â€Å"who fail to plan are planning to fail. † Planning for professional growth is very important because it allows people to define their vision. Once they know their vision, they can put their heart and their efforts to it. It is similar to having a clear direction in mind. From such a direction, the map can be derived and will help a person navigate through the difficult road of professional growth. A professional growth plan also prescribes the course of action that a person has to take to make the most of his profession. It enables a person to set goals and the corresponding action he has to do to achieve such goals. It also breaks down the vision into achievable goals and prevents him from being overwhelmed and being overtaken by fear or hesitation. At first glance, a vision may seem impossible to achieve. But with goals and objectives, a professional can take one step at a time towards the eventual destination. On the contrary, without a professional growth plan, a person may simply do one thing after another and will end up just doing what he has done in the past over and over again. Over time, he becomes stagnant and eventually his skills will deteriorate. To avoid this scenario from happening, a professional growth plan is very much needed.