Professional Commitment Reflection

Professional Commitment is very important to me.  I feel we have an obligation to our profession, our colleagues, and our students to continuously improve ourselves and share our work with others to ultimately help all who are involved in the profession.  I truly believe that we should share our work and resources to help everyone improve.  I have been sharing the active learning notes with my colleagues and students since I started creating them.  This has helped new and seasoned faculty who are teaching MAT0024C Beginning Algebra.  This has also affected my Action Research results a bit because students and instructors have been sharing the resources, and this could have some impact on the control group for Fall 2007.  This is a good problem to address because the results truly show that people are interested and are benefiting from my notes.  I not only shared my notes with my colleagues on Osceola campus, but also sent copies of the notes in order to contact people on all of Valencia’s campuses.  I have received mixed feedback.  One faculty member on Winter Park will be piloting the book in Fall 2008.  I have not heard much feedback from my contacts on East and West campus.  I need to continue promoting the notes to them and share the completed data from this action research and the data I plan to gather from Summer 2008.  I have also discussed my notes at various conventions such as those of the Florida Developmental Education Association (FDEA) and through Valencia’s professional development programs, such as Scenarios.  I am planning on sharing the notes at my upcoming presentation at the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD) in May 2008.  I am very happy to share work such as the notes, and I am excited when they are used and I hear that they make a difference in a student’s learning.  That is what our profession is about: helping people be successful in learning.