EDU 450 Weekly Reflection 8

This week has been a little crazy with the deadline for edTPA approaching so rapidly. I would give this week a rating of 2, simply because of the amount of stress and issue with getting everything done in very limited time frames. My engagement with students was not as deep as I would have liked it to be, and I have felt as though edTPA has hindered me from fully focusing on student teaching. My instruction plans still engaged students in learning, but I spent much of the time I would typically be engaging with them during free play revising tasks and completing commentaries to meet the deadline for today's seminar. I could see a difference in some of the behavior of my students when I was less engaged in center time, as they would frequently come to talk to me as I worked on developing lesson plans or revising commentaries. One pleasant outcome of the week was that I have completed all edTPA Tasks, with the exception of the final edit of Task 3! This feels like a huge relief and I feel like I will be able to concentrate better on my teaching.
I will use my experience of using my time to work, rather than engage with my students to change this drastically. Without an overwhelming amount of work to do, I feel like I will be able to be more engaged with my students without letting any of my other responsibilities get pushed aside. Engaging my students is my top priority in the classroom, and edTPA has recently been a huge roadblock for me accomplishing that as much as I would like.
Short-term efforts of completing edTPA make me feel better about my long-term goals of graduating and completing my portfolio requirements, which is another huge feat before the end of the semester. I do not really feel like I had much time to spare or delegate to different tasks with the demanding tasks of edTPA, but feel as though my time will be put to much better use in the future now that that is complete. I was not apprehensive or indecisive about anything this week, and actually made some decisions with complete confidence this week.
Mental clutter I can clear is the overwhelming amount of focus on edTPA! I am very excited to be able to focus on other important aspects of student teaching. The data I have analyzed has been the assessment data for edTPA, and Galileo data collected from a high performing student and a low performing student, demonstrating areas of mastery, what students are ready to learn, and what they will need extra time to be prepared to learn.
My focus has been a little limited in regards to NC TCS this week, however data collection has been valuable to me as I develop lesson plans aligned to student ability and readiness to gain new skills. I have also had limited time to focus on portfolio artifacts, but have plans to focus heavily on these in the upcoming weeks as I get closer to the end of the semester. To my knowledge, my CE needs no additional support from my university supervisor, and the only support I can think of that I need at this time from my supervisor, and the education department, is review of edTPA Task 3 Commentary.