Standard #9: Professional Learning and Ethical Practice.
Wong and Wong discuss a lot of aspects that come together to make an effective teacher, but one they reiterate throughout The First Days of School is that a “professional educator is always learning and growing” (Wong & Wong, p. 301), and standard 9 of the InTASC Standards addresses just this. Professional learning is not limited to attending conferences or joining a professional organization, though these things are extremely important, it also includes “taking responsibility for student learning and [using]… analysis and reflection to improve planning and practice” (InTASC, p. 18). Effective teachers take every opportunity to critically evaluate their current strategies and adapt and…show more content… Wong & Wong also address the importance of assessment, asserting that objectives should determine tests, not the other way around (p. 246). This directly corresponds with standard 6(c), which states that teachers should design assessments that “match learning objectives” to limit biased test results. By purposefully basing tests on objectives for learning, each student is given an equal chance to succeed. This opportunity for success is increased when students are given a scoring guide that “spells out how [they] can earn points or a grade” (Wong & Wong, p. 264), giving them the opportunity to appropriately prepare for the demands of a given assessment. I believe it is essential to recognize that there are numerous types of, and purposes for, assessments and employing a variety of them in the classroom is key. As Wong & Wong point out “it need not be a written test… it can be a musical number… an oral response, or the creation of a project or product” (p. 250) that is used to gauge student learning. Incorporating a range of testing methods limits source bias while also allowing students to incorporate and highlight their multiple intelligences and how that plays into their overall understanding of the