Here we go, TPA....

If you were in the teaching credential program as a Beginning Student Teacher (BST), TPA can be good or bad. TPA is known as the Teacher Performance Assessment. It's a test mandated by the Department of Education in California. Fortunately for Vanguard, the Graduate Education Program has been piloting this assessment for a few years now so the staff and faculty know how to prepare the teacher candidates, and students have been successfully passing them.

So now, its my time to do it. It's been a struggle for me to start because I have been tossing back and forth what topic I should do the lesson in. However, last Monday, as I was doing homework for another class, God dropped an idea in my mind to do my TPA on a topic I knew quite well. I'm quite fond of Language Arts, though it can be challenging when you're trying to teach it to someone else, but I like it personally. Then, I'm doing the lesson using Concept Attainment (CA) Instructional Strategy, which in the past, when I performed a Lesson using the CA, the students who don't usually perform well did really good on the assessment I conducted together with my lesson.

So, as I embark on this journey to finish the TPA, I was greatly encouraged with Professor Rose's words today in class, and I paraphrase, that God transcends time, he can give you the grace to finish something in 5 minutes that usually takes 3 hours!!!! God, please let that be me!!! I know that's a little silly, but the idea is that time was a man-made instrument in order to communicate to each other and to form some kind of structure to organize our lives. However, God is the God of time. I just need to trust him that he will give me the grace to finish this in time as I do my best, not for the grade, but because I'm obeying his call for my life to be a teacher. It's not easy, but is it worth it? ....Most definitely.

And today God reminded me of the verse we used during my wedding:

¹ There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven...¹¹ He has made everything beautiful in its time..." - Ecclesiastes 3:1,11a