Introduction: 
Professional development in my understanding, is expanding my knowledge base, updating myself to remain competent enough, so as to teach or educate my students, using all evolving strategies of learning and helps them to grow in a complete way.

• According to me, learning doesn’t stop after I get my degree. It is just a beginning, career growth is directly related to the learning I do after my graduation for my professional development.
• If I develop professionally, it effectively means growth of my students too. Knowledge that I gained by attending seminars, in-service training, workshops helps in innovating better teaching strategies which in turn helps in better and easy understanding of the subjects by students which is the ultimate goal of any teacher.
• Change is the only constant thing in this world. If I keep taking classes the same way, it becomes monotonous and slowly, the students stop concentrating. By learning new skills, innovating different ways of teaching keeps all students engaged actively in learning.
• Every day new concepts emerge in all fields. So, I should update myself about the evolving trends, so that I can carry it to my students which would help them learn those concepts and at the same time, incorporate the same character in them.

List of professional development activities I would like to pursue for my professional growth:

The reasons for selecting those activities with concrete examples:

1.Attending webinars and trainings to learn new activities and  improve my teaching methodologies:

• First I enrolled myself in UTA, which has set its goal as “Teach, Train, Transform”. In UTA, the first training I attended was on “finding copyright free images/music, creation of mind maps, digital brochures/certificates”. It was a 10-days online workshop and I had hands-on experience and I implemented the same to my students with the help of WhatsApp. My students are very much happy as their teacher has used a different way of learning and started eagerly waiting every day to learn new things in a new way.
• The second session was on, ‘creation of basic E-content, animated content, stop motion animation, and uploading the content on the web’. It’s another milestone for me and for a long time, I had planned to learn those techniques of creating E-contents. Now I am well-versed in creating e-content for my subjects and also, I am evaluating and assessing my students through Google forms, H5P, live interactive worksheets. By learning this, I am confident that I am moving forward to the next step of animation.

Then, I would really want to thank Gurushala, for helping me grow professionally. Because, this is the platform where I gained knowledge related to new teaching methodologies, to share my ideas, ask my doubts, and post my content creation. And also, I completed modules on classroom management, usage of Information Technology in classrooms. 

Due to the experience I gained by attending webinars, I am very proud to say that I am one of the top three winners in ‘Puducherry teacher innovator competition’ organised by Gurushala and Puducherry Education Department.

2.Writing articles in ‘Thisaimaani journal’:

To increase my vocabulary and to learn new ways of teaching what my colleagues and fellow teachers are practising, I subscribed to ‘Thisaimaani journal’. In this journal, various activities followed in other schools of Pondicherry were also published. Initially, I learnt many new activities by reading those articles, but later I also contributed by publishing my articles which are “challenges faced in classroom teaching”, “Teaching methodologies''.

3.School visits:

I am very interested in visiting other school’s science exhibition, Reading Festival and annual day functions because I learn a lot by observing various ways they organise and execute their students’ performance in functions. By doing so I can incorporate those ideas in my classroom teaching also.

Conclusion
Professional development is definitely important in one’s life and it makes teachers capable of doing new things. Our whole life we should dedicate to process of learning and gaining new useful knowledge that has to be effectively transferred to our students.