Supporting Student Teachers & Graduates

PENZ is an organisation which has definitely supported my growth as a beginning teacher over the last couple of years. I have attended graduate mentoring sessions, two conferences (2016, 2017) and been sent ongoing information about our profession and PDs. As a result, I decided to give back and volunteer for the Auckland branch.

I have been involved in two workshops for first and second year teachers, a graduate mentoring programme, which I found useful last year. I worked alongside teachers who also gave up their time, from an array of schools. Mallory Bish and I have just completed registration, so decided to work together on a couple of the components for the day. Please see below our presentations from our first session.

The second section had a major focus on the criteria needed for registration. We spent time breaking down each of the new standards and evidence which could be used for the standards. I feel this was incredibly useful not only for the newbies, but also for myself moving forward. Having discussions with the graduates alongside some experienced teachers, gave lots of ideas I hadn't thought of before, so will be great to utilise moving forward.

I enjoyed giving back to the community after receiving support myself, and found it useful to remind myself of some of the key things I need to be doing myself (even though I am registered now). There was lots of great feedback and feedforward from the beginning teachers, to support the programme again next year. Unfortunately there weren't as many attendees as we had hoped (to either session), but, I think this is because we needed to promote the sessions more frequently and across more platforms (easily done next year).

Reflecting on these sessions I realised that some of the information may have been incredibly useful BEFORE starting to teach, particularly the legalities and expectations associated with being a first year. I then suggested having a team who presented to graduates of teaching degrees who are starting to apply for jobs now, because I would have loved to have a session as a student teachers. So I teamed up with two others to create the below presentation. We visited The University of Auckland Bachelor of PE cohort yesterday, and are planning to present to their Grad Dip, as well as the Grad Dip for Auckland University of Technology.

I found both of these experiences beneficial, because I increased in my confidence to present to others, and felt great about supporting others. I am looking forward to completing more presentations, as well as continuing to support PENZ next year (and attend conference!).