DOMAIN A MY STORY

My Story

Courtney Burnett
TED 690
Professor Johnson

DOMAIN A MY STORY

Abstract
The following selection can be found in the my story area of the website
www.courtneyellenburnett.weebly.com. This selection describes what my
experience has been thus far as a teacher. As my PDQP progresses through
this course I will add to what is put into this portion of the website. This
paper currently shows the artifacts I have uploaded into my website for
domain A.

DOMAIN A MY STORY

Hello, my name is Courtney Burnett, I currently teach first grade at a

small rural school on the west side of Fresno. I have been at this school for 4
years now and this school reminds me of my own elementary school growing
up. An interesting fact about my elementary school experience was, that I
had my grandfather as my fifth grade teacher. I come from a family full of
teachers, and that has been a huge influence on my success in school, as
well as what I chose to become as an adult. My undergraduate study actually
began in Psychology. I was set on becoming a family counselor or school
psychologist. Upon having my first son, back in 2008, I decided that teaching
him new things was what I loved to do the most and it brought out a
nurturing side to me with children. I returned to school to attain my
credential in multiple subjects. i knew if I wanted to teach that it would be in
the primary grade levels. Upon completion of my credential, I was able to
teach as a long term substitute position in 4th grade. I loved the experience
and knew I had made the right choice going into education. I then taught for
2 years in preschool and have found my home for the last 4 years in first
grade. I love this grade level and hope to spend many more years teaching
at this grade level. Going back to my teaching family influence, my grandma
taught in the first grade for 25 years. We have many conversations about
how times have changed in the first grade and how many things have
actually stayed remarkably the same. I love the amount of reading and
writing progression you can find in first grade and it keeps me wanting to
come back to this grade level every year. Since I have been awarded my

DOMAIN A MY STORY

tenure and have been fortunate enough to remain in the same classroom
and grade level over the last several years, I found this to be the very best
time to finish the Master's program. I had, at one point considered
educational counseling as a program to enter, but I feel like the classroom is
where I belong and where I can make the most difference and impact on my
students.
Looking into my teaching as a professional craft, I can compare where I
am and where I need to be to the California Teaching Performance
Expectations. The intentions of TPES are to guide teachers through their
professional development. They are categorized to help teachers specify the
areas in which are strengths and areas of improvement. The TPES are as
follows:
A. Making Subject Matter Comprehensible to Students
TPE 1: Specific Pedagogical skills for Subject Matter Instruction
TPE 1A: Subject-Specific Pedagogical Skills for Multiple Subject Teaching Assignments.
B. Assessing Student Learning
TPE 2: Monitoring Student Learning During Instruction
TPE 3: Interpretation and use of Assessments
C. Engaging and Supporting Students in Learning
TPE 4: Making Content Accessible
TPE 5: Student Engagement
TPE 6: Developmentally Appropriate Teaching Practices
TPE 7: Teaching English Learners
D. Planning instruction and Designing Learning Experiences for Students
TPE 8: Learning About Students

DOMAIN A MY STORY
TPE 9: Instructional Planning
E. Creating and Maintaining Effective Environments for Student Learning
TPE 10: Instructional Time
TPE 11: Social Environment
F. Developing as a Professional Educator
TPE 12: Professional, Legal, and Ethical Obligations
TPE 13: Professional Growth

Looking further into the TPEs in terms of what my strengths and

weaknesses as a teacher, I come up with many things under this TPEs that I
feel I have gained great success in as a teacher, and I have also found areas
I would like to see improvement. I have broken down these strengths and
weaknesses in the following chart. I chose to focus on the following TPE
specifically.
Domain A TPE 1: Making Subject Matter Comprehensible to All Students
-

Strengths
One strength, I know I have in this area
is the drive to make the curriculum
attainable to each student. I know the
importance of this type of teaching and I
have the want to make this happen for
my students and their learning.
I have a great support system in and
around my school. I know if I need
anything, I have excellent peer teachers
to bounce ideas off of, and observe. I
have administration that listens to the
needs of our students and they will
make our development align with those
needs.
I feel that I have been trained well to
find what the needs are of my students,
and I feel confident that I can meet their
needs with appropriate material that will
make the curriculum accessible to them.

Weaknesses
I am a newer teacher, and I feel
inexperienced at times to deal with
new situations that arise. I know this
will change in time, but as of now, I am
green to some teaching practices.
Time and time management within the
classroom. I get caught up in
teachable moments and that can take
away from the timeline of my day and
lesson plan.
Communicating more with parents, I
would like to have more of a line of
communication open to parents, I get
timid with parents that dont speak
English and I feel like I communicate
with those less than I should on a
weekly bases.

When looking into the TPE standards, the one standard that
stands out to me as one that needs ongoing improvement to me is under

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domain A, making subject comprehensible to all students. I have struggled

with this from the beginning of my teaching and it has always been an area I
need to get better at overall in my teaching practices. In the beginning of my
teaching, I would teach in whole class instruction much more than I should
have. I have learned that teaching students, in my grade level especially, are
best instructed in small leveled groups. I chose to include an observation I
did in my PDQP that really turned my small group instruction time around.
In the next portion of this paper, I would like to include rationales for
the artifacts I chose to include in my PDQP. As previously mentioned, I
included a peer teacher observation in artifact 1 of domain A in my PDQP. I
chose to use this observation because this teacher has really mastered the
use of domain A in her classroom and especially in the terms of small group
instruction. I have used many of her strategies and techniques during my
small group instruction. She has shown me how to successfully differentiate
the instruction and I wanted to share an observation I had in her class to
demonstrate how well she can level her instruction to meet the needs of
each student; A skill that is desired to be found in this Domain A of the TPES.
This observation also opened my eyes to Orton-Gillingham teachings and I
have researched the strategies used in their differentiated instruction
from https://www.orton-gillingham.com/ the sensory ways of teaching have
been very beneficial within my classroom and has helped me to better attain
the ultimate goal of Domain A of the TPES, which is to make education
accessible to all students.

DOMAIN A MY STORY

For artifact 2, I used a class inventory with student data. Once I

discovered ways to differentiate my instruction effectively, I had to figure out
ways to group my students into sub-groups to teach them each at a more
appropriate learning level. The following form is something I attained from
my time in BTSA. I continue to use this inventory at the beginning of each
school year. It is a place for me to record baseline data for my entering
students and from this data I am able to effectively group them according to
their levels of ELA and math. I use this to incorporate leveled learning for
them from the very start of the year. The inventory also has places to note
IEP, behavioral, and migrant student goals, all of which important to note
when setting up for differentiated instruction. The information in this
inventory is fluid and changes as the needs of each student changes. I save
updated versions of this inventory at various times of the year for my
reference.
The third artifact in the area of domain A in my PDQP is a literature
review that supports the need and importance of small group instruction. I
included this artifact to support my choice of using a peer teacher
observation who successfully used small group instruction in her classroom. I
also felt that this review supported my choice of including the inventory in
which I store student data to help create my small groups to instruct.

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References
http://www.caltpe.com/
http://www.ctc.ca.gov/educator-prep/standards/adopted-TPEs-2013.pdf
https://www.orton-gillingham.com/