ABE Prompts

You may want to use these assignments within your LMS to help students ‘chunk’ the ABE into smaller assignments.

Section One

Educational Background (this should be your 1st subtitle)

  • Where did you attend elementary, secondary, and post-secondary school?
  • What is your current level of education?
  • What unique educational experiences have you had in terms of special schools, programs, or studies?
  • How has your education contributed to your development as a professional educator? (Did you use specific, concrete examples?)

Please review samples of previous ABEs available online that can be found by clicking this link to see how to format the cover page and journal.

Additional questions on APA cover pages can also be answered only by clicking this link to Purdue OWL..

Students’ lose points most often on APA for the cover page. Please see this video to learn how to set up the header specifically by clicking this link to a YouTube video .

When complete, the essay should be about 1-1/12 pages, double-spaced.

Save the file. You can add the next journal to it, building the ABE throughout the semester.
Your ABE will become part of the portfolio you create in EDUC 290, the final EDUC course at CWI.

Section Two

Work History Service and/or Extracurricular Activities (this should be your 2nd subtitle)

  • Detail work experiences, including roles and responsibilities?
  • How have these experiences contributed to your development as a professional educator? (Did you use specific, concrete examples?)
  • In what service and/or extracurricular activities are/were you currently involved?
  • How have these activities contributed to your development as a professional educator? (Did you use specific, concrete examples?)

Section Three

Ethical Reasoning in Education (this should be your 3rd subtitle, flush left, bold)

  • Identify and explain an educational ethical dilemma from your personal history, classroom observations, or current day events.
  • Select a particular ethical orientation to develop a solution for that dilemma
  • Egoism, Utilitarianism, Kantian, Divine Command theory, and Virtue. See information to explain these terms at www.carolbilling.weebly.com, as well as complete your own research

When complete, this part of the ABE should be added to your previous ABE draft paper in APA format. ABE #1 & 2 draft. Make sure to complete the suggested edits to journal two before adding this section.

Eventually you’ll use the journals to write your Autobiographical Essay (ABE) in APA. Your ABE will become part of the portfolio you create in EDUC 290, the final EDUC course at CWI.

Section Four

Reasons for Choosing Education as a Career (use this as your subheading, flush left, bold)

  • When did you first consider education as a career?
  • Why did you decide to become a teacher?
  • What other careers have you considered?
  • What rewards do you anticipate?
This portion of the ABE should be about 1-1.5 pages. Make necessary edits/improvements to the cover page, sections 1, 2 and 3, and then add this fourth section.
Keep an eye on your length, I  know you have a lot of good information to share but you’ll have to prioritize. What information is most relevant to your future as a teacher?

Section Five

Professional Goals

  • What are your long-term goals? (Be specific, transfer college? Name of degree you will earn? Future job?)
  • What are your short-term goals?(Be specific, describe small goals which  ultimately help you complete the long-term goals)
  • Describe how you intend to achieve these goals.

When you add this final section to your ABE draft (cover, section 1-4), you should be almost done. Make sure to complete the edits/recommendations from your previous journals. When you get feedback on this section, review and make edits, add a conclusion and you’ve completed the ABE.

Always remember to give yourself a night to ‘sleep on it’ – by this I mean, finish the paper, sleep overnight and then read the paper out loud the next day to catch any typos or leaps in logic before submitting the paper.

I swear by this method, I use it all the time. You will catch small typos and its the difference between an A and B paper.

Submit the final version of your ABE here.

If you became a CWI student Fall 2015 or later, you also need to upload this final ABE to the ‘Ethical Reasoning Signature Assignment” in TaskStream. If you have questions on TaskStream, I have some information online at this website link. Once there click on the ‘TaskStream’ button. If you’ve been a student semesters prior to Fall 2015, you don’t have to do anything with TaskStream, you don’t have a TaskStream account.

For full credit, you need to attach your final ABE paper, as well as a draft ABE that was edited by a tutor at CWI’s Online Writing Lab.

Any ABE submitted without a draft edited by OWL is an automatic -10 point deduction.

See Course Calendar for due date.

The following is the AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY SCORING RUBRIC: EDUC 201 Foundations of Education. If it does not appear below if can be found online by clicking this link.