How to Write a Personal Statement for an Elementary Teacher
An elementary teacher's personal statement, much like a businesses mission statement, acts as a guiding statement of purpose. This broad, single-sentence goal statement can be revisited throughout the year, reminding the teacher of the educational goals she would like to accomplish with her students. To compose a personal statement, you must consider your students, their abilities and what you would ultimately like to accomplish during the course of the academic year.
Instructions
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Consult your school's mission statement. Most schools have a pre-existing mission statement that governs the education that occurs within the school. Review this mission statement before you begin composing your personal statement to ensure that they are aligned and cohesive.
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Select an academic goal. Decide upon an age-appropriate, overarching goal. This goal should be very broad, as it is intended to cover the study that occurs through the entire academic year. Goals like “improve student comprehension” or “increase student ability to work independently” are adequately broad goals that can effectively be used in your statement.
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Select a psycho-social goal. Many teachers, especially in the elementary grades, also have social and developmental goals for their students. Consider the behavioral improvements you would like your students to make by the end of the year, and develop a broad, all-encompassing statement to express the expectations you have for end-of-the-year student behavior.
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Determine common areas of student difficulty. Review test results from previous academic years, and decide upon some areas in which students consistently struggle. If your students have struggled in vocabulary development for several years, it is wise to incorporate this key area of weakness into your statement.
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Decide how you will assist students in improving in their areas of weakness. Select several methods that you will employ in assisting your students in improving in the key areas. Your selected methods should be research-based and have proven educational effectiveness.
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Create a concise, one-sentence statement encompassing your findings. Combine your academic goals, behavioral goals and difficulty remediation goals into one, broad statement. Include within this statement a list of the methods for achieving student improvement that you selected.
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Follow the “to . . . by” pattern, beginning your statement with the word “to” and using the word “by” before you explain your intended methods for ensuring student improvement. Upon completion of this task, you should have a statement that is similar in form to the following: “To improve student comprehension, ability to engage in cooperative behavior and basic vocabulary development skills by scaffolding instruction, modeling appropriate peer relations and engaging students in context clue activities.”
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