Three Years Under My Belt

I cannot believe my third year of teaching is over, and my first year at Orewa College. I have been on a rollercoaster this year, learning so much about the school culture and curriculum. I felt a little lost throughout the year, but also had substantial support surrounding me with my million questions! I had an end of year appraisal meeting with Adam, my HOD, discussing my strengths and areas I need further development in, in relation to the practising teacher criteria (see full report here). This post identifies some of the key points from our discussion.

My strengths are my lifelong learning, my professional relationships (particularly with my students), my classroom culture and the learning opportunities I provide. To strengthen these PTCs even further, next year I would like to make connections and increase my relationships within the community, and increase my understanding and inclusion of the Ako Orewa learning process (as previously blogged about). From student feedback, such as these comments from my Level 2 class, I feel confident with my classroom environments and hope students continue to feel safe and comfortable in my lessons.

Moving forward, the two PTCs which need the most attention/growth are 1 (Te Tiriti o Waitangi) and 5 (Design for learning). Next year I would love to learn more Te Reo Maori concepts, customs and terminology. I feel I naturally use some key phrases such as Morena, Haere Mai and Whakarongo Mai within my practice, but have a lot more to learn about cultural practices of Maori and other cultures within our community. One cultural practice we need to be aware of when teaching sexuality education for example, is that Tongan and Samoan students cannot be in the same lessons as their siblings as it is considered inappropriate. I feel though, I need to learn a substantial amount more about the history, culture and beliefs of our non New Zealand European students.

Therefore, my major 2019 goal is to become more confident in the use of Te Reo, read about tikanga Maori and have professional conversations with the Languages department at school. As a result, I would like to further develop the cultural responsiveness within my classes, to ensure I am inclusive of all students, with a specific focus on Maori. 

An additional goal is to analyse student achievement and student progress more regularly throughout the year, not only at the end of the year. After the Seniors left, I spent time breaking down student results, reflecting on the results, and examining where to go next, but feel I needed to have more discussions with students throughout the year to formatively assess their learning, not only summative assessment. I feel that can be achieved by shaping the structure within my classroom to allow for small group tutorials, as well as discussions with individuals. This structure will require a lot a trust within my classes, which will come back to how I create relationships with the students. I am grateful to be sharing a Level 3 PE class with Adam, and his strength is structuring his classes to have tutorials and check-ins with the kids, so I will learn plenty alongside him!

Now though, it is time to unwind and have a break, ready to tackle some new challenges next year!

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!).

Success Should Be Justified

A couple of weeks ago I attended a Sunday afternoon PD organised by PENZ. The session was geared towards beginning teachers in the Health and PE field, focused around common struggles BTs have. I was unfortunately unable to attend last year, but thought the schedule looked valuable.

Even though I now have one year experience, it was a great reminder of some things I often do not take the time to stop and think about. We explored a variety of topics including keeping ourselves safe, marking and moderation, culturally responsive pedagogy and gathering evidence for our registration. 

One key takeaway for me was the reminder of the importance of checking assessment specifications and clarification notes for NCEA assessments, something I did not do last year because I was co-teaching with an experienced teacher. In hindsight, I fear I may have put too much trust into my co-teacher when it came to creating, marking and moderating assessments. I should have regularly checked and critiqued the assessments we were using and asked questions when I wasn't sure or felt something was a little off. At the end of the day, I want my students to be successful and achieve as many credits they can, but I want it to be reliable/accurate.

This year our department is giving 110% to ensure the assessments we create are correct and enable success, and our marking and moderation is accurate. Today's session encouraged me to reflect on what I need to do this year with my Year 11s to make sure they are achieving to their best potential and are graded correctly. My students first assessment of the year is due tonight, today I have started to feel more comfortable  about marking, particularly how to distinguish the difference between a Merit and an Excellence.

A huge thank you to Amy Tipene, Katie Spraggon and Ashlee Ross for running the workshop, I will be suggesting the 2018 first years to attend!

Nearly Half Registered

We were lucky to have today to develop our sites as our evidence towards our registration. I have neglected this a little this year, so I am grateful to have the time to work on this. We have 12 criteria to provide evidence for throughout our first two years of teaching, in order to become fully registered teachers.

I have begun to develop a site which I can use throughout my entire teaching career for appraisals. The tree represents me. Each year a new leaf will be added onto the tree, so as I gain more experience, the tree will blossom! In addition, as I gain more experience, the winter theme will disappear, and I will transitions through the seasons as my tree fills.

Each leaf delves further into the evidence and things I have been doing throughout that year. I am excited to see how this develops in the future!

Chaos Needing Organised

This afternoon I don't know what was going on, but I felt as if my class was a right disgrace. I was counting down the minutes until it was over! Usually I only teach my SOS class on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and Dot teaches them on Mondays without me. But, Dot is away this week so I offered to take them to not disrupt the flow of learning by having a reliever.

The Monday-itis other teachers often talk about became apparent very quickly! I don't know what it was but they were bouncing off the walls, crazy loud and ignoring many of my instructions. I don't think they were disrespecting me, they were just in weird headspaces and distracting and disrupting others, feeding off one another.

I left feeling a little lost as to what was going on, what went wrong and what needed to change in prep for future lessons. I went straight to the gym and sweated out my frustrations with how the lesson went. After reflecting a little I wondered what I was doing or not doing during the class. I have been trying hard recently to not blame the kids for bad behaviour, or lack of engagement in class, because at the end of the day it must be down to my instructions and/or classroom management.

Our PTC agenda after school was timely; classroom management. We had lots of discussion around planning for management, having a clear understanding of the school management model and having support people when you are really in trouble. One key thing I took away from the meeting was setting clear expectations at the beginning of the year, and sticking to them. For instance if headphones is a no no for someone in Term 1, headphones are a no no for everyone the whole year - this may reduce any "But Miss you said..." replies from students. 

I feel as if classroom management was something we never really discussed, experimented or explored during uni, it was something I was thrown into at the start of the year. Learning on the job so to speak. I do feel I have come a long way since the beginning of the year, but still have considerable room for improvement still!

Some simple management styles/techniques I have developed include; waiting for silence as opposed to talking over the students, relating to my high expectations of students often (especially when they aren't fulfilling these expectations), using countdowns with my fingers or my voice and saying "I will only give these instructions once". Although these techniques are not gold, and don't work all the time, they are things I come back to. I am open to any and all tips!

Uike Lea-Faka Tonga 2016

Welcome to Tongan Language Week 2016!

This morning I was feeling quite lethargic, exhausted and not excited for the week ahead. The Latu family (2 are teachers at school) changed this after their beautiful singing. Check them out here!

We went through some of the basic words in Tongan and then the Latus and the Tongan teachers sung their national anthem. I felt much calmer, happier and blessed after this, it was a lovely start to the week.

Although I don't pronounce everything correctly, I am trying and students are appreciating this nevertheless. Once I am fluent with my sign language, I would like to learn some basic words and phrases from a variety of languages to use in the classroom.

Ma'u ha 'aho lelei!

(Have a good day!)

Abstract vs Concrete

A couple of times a term, the group of Beginning Teachers who are working towards completing their registration meet. We discuss challenges, goals, our practice and our development holistically. I enjoy these sessions, because we are able to discuss a variety of things happening in our lives inside and outside the classroom, and support one another with any struggles we may be having. Even though many of my friends are BTs, every school is so different, so I like having discussions with colleagues in similar shoes to me.

Today Lyn Groves, our meeting facilitator, posed the question: do you teach and talk in abstract or in concrete? I had no idea what she was asking, but Lyn and the group broke this down to discuss further. The word abstract itself I found difficult to relate to and make sense of, as it is not a term I use often. After discussion, I concluded we were talking about terminology and jargon we use in our classroom that may be perceived in a variety of ways. Terms that are subjective, not easily defined - the example used was fitness. Fitness is an abstract term as it can be defined differently by many, which is exactly why I avoid using this word. However, if I do use this term, I follow it up with a description of what I am referring to - this is the concrete Lyn was alluding to.

We discussed the need to consider the jargon we are using in our classrooms, to ensure the greatest understanding possible our students can have. As we have many English Language Learners, or students who are learning/speaking English as their second language, using as little words that are subjective, or abstract, as possible, may enable students to comprehend more of what we are teaching, rather than possibly switching off when they hear a word they don't understand. If we do use any abstract terms, it is important to then concrete them with explanations and examples, so they are no longer abstract. These concrete terms provide students with word associations they may be able to relate to, which can help with the terminology they need to become familiar with in the classroom. I am going to be more conscious of the words I use both in and out of the classroom, when explaining/teaching, and never assume who I am talking to/with understand all the words I be may using.

The infographic helped me to make sense of the two terms a little more. For a more wordy, yet simple clarification, Ginger Grammar Rules helped me also.

First Year Mayhem

Being a beginning teacher has many of it's challenges, both inside and outside the classroom. The biggest difference between being a student teacher and a BT I have found, is the admin! The amount of 'paperwork' behind the scenes is overwhelming, I was naive to how much teachers do outside of teaching. 

A huge component of being a BT is working towards full teachers registration, which requires considerable evidence gathering over a two year period. Beginning teachers such as myself have 12 practising teacher criteria (PTC) to consider throughout our planning, teaching and reflections, and we must provide evidence we are meeting the criteria in order to become fully registered.

In addition to becoming a fully certified teacher, there are various rules, regulations and pieces of legislation we must abide by and consider as a professional learner and developer. All of this combined with the million and one other things to consider when teaching is difficult to keep track and on top of. 

I was fortunate enough to attend another PD session today, led by the Post-Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA), focusing on this BT mayhem. We addressed the teacher criteria and possible pieces of evidence we could use towards our registration. The afternoon focused on the hard stuff, like the Secondary Teachers' Collective Agreement, and what this means for us and our role. Sometimes I forget that I am actually employed, that I am a teacher, sometimes I forget it is a job, so it was helpful to go through the stuff people don't seem to talk about often in schools.

In addition to learning more about my expectations, rights and responsibilities, were we given a variety of scenarios to consider. I joint the PPTA to know I always have support no matter what may or may not happen, and this is what was demonstrated this afternoon. I left the PD knowing I had full support for any sticky situation I may find myself in, or for any little thing whatsoever. I look forward to the future courses.

Please visit PPTA's website to learn more about their role as a union.