Reflecting on our journey together

There is a great sense of satisfaction of getting to the end of something, whether finishing a performance, a good novel, or even a long car ride. However getting to the end of a CPD opportunity isn’t quite the same: instead we need to see it as a springboard to the next challenge in our careers, of putting what we’ve learnt into practice, and honing the new skills we have developed.

You may wish to formalise plans for your next steps in your CPD journey by creating a Professional Development Plan, (PDP for short). We’ve provided a template for you to download below this article. To help with writing this, turn back to week 1 and see what you contributed to the discussions with Diana, consider what parts of Monica’s lesson you thought you could try from week 2 and consider experimenting with different online platforms that we discussed with Anthony in week 3.

Continuing Professional Development is what it says it is, and it needs to be continuous. Put your PDP somewhere in your home or workplace where you regularly look. We suggest looking at it on, say, a monthly basis and splitting some of the larger goals into bitesize chunks through the year. There’s nothing stopping you from revisiting this course again as a helpful reminder of what you promised yourself you’d achieve.

As we said at the beginning, being a good teacher relies on many factors, but at the core is continual self-appraisal and self-awareness. This is about acknowledging and understanding both our strengths and our weaknesses, which in turn will show us where we need to adapt and embrace new ideas.

We’ve included some example PDPs below too, so if you’re stuck with what to write on yours, have a look at the examples and see if those spark some ideas for you.