If you follow me on Twitter, you have probably seen the thread of 26 Tweets that have been being blasted through my account over the past 6 hours. This morning I realized the next round of edTPA scoring was about to come up; if I wanted to get my score before I start work in July, I would need to submit my final edTPA by tomorrow. So, I sat down in my jammies, made a huge travel mug of my current favorite tea, and sat down to work.
And, in order to have some built in brain breaks, as well as a source for any anxiety or extra energy, I decided to Live Tweet the entire adventure, which was definitely, a choice…I hope I was, at least able to to make a couple of people giggle!
Since I just lived the grueling experience of submitting that giant portfolio, I figured I would leave you with a few sage words of advice for when your turn comes around.
1. Know the Cost
The edTPA is not cheap. The faster we talk about it, the better we can get over it – like ripping off a bandaid. I paid exactly $300 to submit my edTPA. Well, I say me. My mother and father were kind enough to let that nasty payment be my graduation present from them. I am beyond grateful to their support and for the privilege of not needing to worry about where that money was coming from. Let’s just say, I did not find it very easy to have a big income during my last year of college, and what money I did make usually ended up going towards my B4C training.
It is pretty pricey to become a teacher in NYS, and I think it is something that isn’t talked about enough, at least in my program. If I had realized that earlier on, I would have paced myself, my spending, and my saving a bit more. For a full breakdown of the costs of the NYS teacher certification processes, check out my post from last year: Getting My Certifications.
2. Pace Yourself
Ya, ya, ya, I know I said I did this in a 6 hour sprint today, but that is only partially true. In reality, I have been working on the edTPA since January. The Wagner Ed Dept is kind enough to have a required class for all student teachers that walks us through the edTPA, part by part. I spent 14 weeks dissecting Pearson’s unfamiliar jargon, picking out the perfect research that the edTPA creators actually used in the writing of the test, and creating the perfect lessons for each of the 4 Tasks.
Of course, my professor could not grade the edTPA as my *soon to be* Pearson Scorer will. However, he had been through training in how the edTPA works, and could use that knowledge to make sure we understood it through and through. A ‘draft’ of our edTPAs acted as our class final, which he graded using the Danielson Rubric.
Trust me, you are going to want to break down the edTPA into nice, easy, bitesized pieces. If your college isn’t as supportive as mine, reach out to a professor who knows the system well, a friend who just did the edTPA, or a recently certified teacher at the school you are at; ask them for a bit of mentorship, and maybe even a bit of copyediting support. Don’t let this be a task you tackle on your own. The words Pearson uses are tricky, the tasks aren’t always clear, and the formatting can be downright confusing at times. Ask. For. Help.
I talk about my initial impressions of the edTPA in this post from January: Welcome to the edTPA.
3. Read. Reread. Then Read Again.
Despite an entire semester of preperation, I still had to redo some stuff today in the 6 hours it took me to finalize and upload everything today. I am so glad I was so attentative to the directions they gave me because I 100000% would have uploaded a bunch of things incorrectly. When you are doing the edTPA, there is a hyperlink to open the document you need to fill in. Under that is another hyperlink to the Handbook, specifically to a page that lists very explicitly what you are expected to include for each task section, how to format each attachment, and how long each attachment needs to be.
I made sure to double check this each time I uploaded a new attachment, and there were at least a dozen times where I realized I missed something or did something incorrectly, and needed to go back and fix it. This was super time consuming, but it means I can now sit back, relatively relaxed, for the next 20 days until my scores come in, instead of wondering if I did everything right.
Again, this would be a great time to reach out to that mentor of yours to make sure you are getting things done right the first time. You probably don’t want to have to pay even more money to Pearson to resubmit a failed section. I know I don’t.
You can also feel free to reach out to me, if you want another opinion on your edTPA. Just follow this link: Contact.
~ Thanks for reading! If you are wondering where the next post in the Sex Ed Series is, I am waiting for a special guest writer to finish it up. Trust me, she is worth the wait! Plus, after my Twitter storm today, this felt like the only appropriate thing to post about this week. Stay updated to see how I did on June 27th! ~
Miss Deryn 