Keys in hand, that's a start

Well I now have my own classroom key, to my own classroom, that I will set out my own way, ready for 29 students who will see me as their own teacher.

It's Christmas and New Year celebration time (and in Southern Hemisphere New Zealand, that means school's out for six weeks for the summer holidays). People are off relaxing and so should I - having just finished three years of fulltime study and awaiting a new first-day-of-school on 7 February 2007.

But of course, I have big things on my mind, and the dilemma is how do I tackle my current anxieties about being prepared? Should I push them aside and do nothing until about the 2nd week of January when I go in and shuffle desks around as a kind of 'first step personal initiation ceremony' and then allow myself to be fully focussed on the task at hand of preparing and planning for those first fews days, weeks, term... or do I begin now.

So much of me wants to get in and get started now, but when I step back from my worries, I realise that there's a lot I can't actually do until closer to the time - particularly in regards to syndicate planning.

More than that though, I think I have an ideological debate going on within my own head. As much as I am committed to this vocation of teaching, I don't want it to consume my whole life. I'm a married man, with kids, and other interests. So often I hear people talk about the overwhelming task of being a teacher and the extra hours put in. But you know, I think it is possible to be an effective teacher and have a life.

One thing I don't want to do is create bad work habits from the start. This is one reason I don't want to start my teaching building a routine of spending too much time at school. Yeah, I know, I'm a beginning teacher and many things will take me longer than one of experience. But you see, I'm determined to make this work without it taking over - which only means I'll need to learn to be efficient very quickly!

Well, we'll see whether I'm right (and capable) as time goes by. Note though, I am not a slacker and I always remember what my Dad said "If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing properly". And a proper job I intend to do. I'm working with something very precious, as I'm certain the parents of the children of Mr Ashcroft's Room 3 will testify.

Got It!

Next year I am officially a teacher at Kauri Park School. I start in February and will be teaching a year 5/6 class.

I am so stoked. This is the job I really wanted. There was one other job I had applied for, and had been offered a position, but after some serious consideration I turned down the offer last week. Possibly a bit of a risk, but the right decision at the time I thought - and it turns out so.

Interestingly (and against statistical trends) the syndicate of four teachers that I will be working with will be made up of three male teachers and one female. Quite rare at primary schooling.

Now the job uncertainty is over – the real thing is on its way. Arrrrgh – I’m both excited and nervous at the same time. It’s going to be great!

This is the one I want

Got the call this morning. I've been short listed and have an interview on Saturday morning. I'm pretty stoked about it - and hope that it's not too long before I find out if I have the job. It'd make a wonderful birthday present!

I'm still to hear back from my first interview with another school. Most likely that will come tomorrow. I'm fairly sure I don't want to work there, but you never know. If they're willing for me to hold off on making a decision so that I can do a school visit and observe some teaching going on (and hang out in the staffroom at morning tea - a great place to get the 'feel' of a school environment), then that'd be nice.

But really, the job I want is at the school where I have an interview on Saturday. More details to come about that when I find out.

Phew - No Brain Freeze!

I did it, I got through my first interview without any complete mind blanks!

One important approach that I think got me through was going in with the attitude of just being myself, being real, and speaking from the heart. What's the point in trying to be someone I'm not? If who I am is not what they want, then getting the job would be no good for either party. This line of thinking actually helped me relax and hence made the interview go all the better.

Secondly, I took along with me a folder of a few things that revealed a bit more of me as a teacher than the initial CV did. I put in a range of things from a variety of curriculum areas. Planning, worksheets, exemplars, etc. The true benefit of this was not so much giving it to the interviewees to browse through at their own leisure, but to actually hold it myself and talk from it as a springboard into sharing more about my approaches and philosophy of teaching. In this way I had my own prompts to ensure I covered key aspects that I felt were important. It also added strength to what I was talking about. As they say, 'a picture is worth a thousand words'. Additionally, I could pick it up again if any of their questions related to content that I had.

These two factors alone I would recommend to anyone going for an interview.

First Interview

Well, seems like this could be an on-going pattern. Firsts that is, not interviews (hopefully). Just had another phone call from the same principal mentioned in my last entry, and have booked in an interview for next Wednesday.

So we'll see how it goes - might need to practice answering some possible questions that may come up.

I do have one other application in at the moment. Both were due to close on 10 November, but the school that just contacted me has decided to start their interviews early.

First applications sent out

I've completed my curriculum vitae (Resumé) and sent out two applications. One to a school that I really would like to get a job at, the other to a school that looks good but I don't know too much about.

I'm taking the approach that it's important for me to start working at a place that I will really want to be at. Kind of like applying for any other job really - why would you work somewhere you don't think you'd enjoy?

Some fellow graduates are taking the 'send-out-as-many-applications-as-you-can' approach. I'm not too sure about that? Although my situation (Male, ICT savey, good grades, 'mature') puts me in a position where I could be in more demand as a primary teacher - but still... why would you want a job at a school that didn't match your own philosophy of teaching?

Anyway. Two applications out and one principal has already phoned me back before the application close off date. That's a good sign that my curriculum vitae helped me through stage one! We'll see how things progress. I would prefer the other school though - is that too fussy?

Have a look at a copy of my CV if you want.

Putting Myself Out There

Well, here we go... time to put together my curriculum vitae to promote myself to prospective schools.

This is the time of year (September/October) that many teaching positions are advertised for the start of next year. One good place to go if you're interested in keeping up to date with any new advertised positions for teaching in New Zealand schools is edgazette.govt.nz. You can set up an email alert that will keep you posted with positions advertised in the last 24hours.

Anyway, time to get back to producing my own CV.

• Something that is professional yet creative and eye-catching
• Not too big - principals don't have all day to read my life story!
• Personal details
• Curriculum related and personal strengths
• Personal Teaching philosophy
• Referees
• Associate Teacher feedback quotes from my various practicum
• Academic history

Lessons from Practicum 5/5

Behaviour and Classroom Management
This final practicum has turned out to be the most difficult (and closest to making me question if I really want to do this!). But, now that I’m through ‘survival mode’, and have time to reflect once again, it has probably contained some of the richest learning that I will take with me as I begin establishing my own classroom next year – Yes, I still have a desire to be a teacher :-)

I’m aware that I still don’t have all the answers (will I ever?), but as the saying goes ‘forearmed is forewarned’. This brings me to my determination to make the best possible start I can to establish a classroom culture of learning. Easier said than done!

What I do know is that my priority in term one will be to establish routines and expectations that will support such a culture of learning. What these are need to be strategically considered before I start. They need to cover issues such as routines, student accountability, ‘stand-by’ resources, and personal reflection.

The following is a reference to a book that covers issues relating to much of this. Particularly classroom culture, managing the learning environment, assessment and evaluation, and beginning teachers.

McGee, C., & Fraser, D. (2005). The professional practice of teaching (2nd ed.). Southbank, Victoria: Thomson Dunmore Press.

Some of my general thoughts at this stage about practical things I need to do are:

• Clear routines including:
• Class rules that promote a learning community and personal responsibility/accountability for learning
• Introducing, reflecting/concluding, and transitioning of lessons
• Start of school day, after interval and lunchtimes
• Tidy classroom organisation
• Continued reflection on teaching programme and timetable to improve personal practice and student engagement
• Establishing a regular means of marking/reviewing student work, both for formative assessment and student accountability
• ‘Stand-by’ resources for various curriculum areas
• Research and list/store references to books & websites
• Make up ‘packs’ of resources that can be reused
• Design a system of storing/filing these for easy/quick access
• Discuss with various teachers/lecturers what they do to ‘fill spaces’

Any ideas of things that you may have done, that have worked well in establishing a positive learning environment, feel free to add as a comment to this entry.

Lessons from Practicum 4/5

Planning Individual Lessons – How Much, How Little?
Following an observation of a lesson I taught, the benefits of having more written planning of individual lessons, including clear steps and questions was discussed. This may reduce the need for teacher intervention in ‘trivial’ management issues and be useful for teacher reflection.

During my observed math lesson I spent a lot of time answering questions regarding what students needed to do, which indicated students weren’t 100% sure of their learning intentions/tasks. The feedback suggested that under more pressured circumstances planning that is too brief could lead to unnecessary management issues.

I feel that the difficulty is finding the appropriate balance between detailed written planning for single lessons and working from a detailed unit plan. Maybe I was concentrating, during this practicum, on aspects of executing lessons without the need to ‘read’ so much from a lesson plan as I had done on previous practicum. Having less planning though may contribute to a greater need for behaviour management during lesson execution? Also, as the ‘observer’ suggested, things may run ok for a time, but under more stressed circumstances I may need more to fall back on. Also, through our education assessment paper, much has been said about setting clear learning intentions and communicating with students how we will know when these have been achieved. Maybe this is part of the solution?

Maybe I can work on a simplified plan for individual lessons that takes from the unit plan and details concisely but clearly the intent and steps for the lesson as well as some focussed questions that may be used as part of the lesson? This may be more so the case for me as a beginning teacher, I’m not sure?

But in any case, having a clear idea of the purpose of each and every lesson (and communicating this clearly with students) is a key aspect of maximising purposeful learning.

Lessons from Practicum 3/5

Class Routines - Key foundation to building a positive learning community
Being with a new-entrance class is a great way of noticing, in a more obvious fashion, what is often regular teacher practice throughout all primary age classrooms. One of the most amplified examples of effective practice observed on this occasion was that of consistent class routines - although this was not fully apparent until after my stint at full control, when things sometimes became a little ‘undone’ :-) …

During my three days sole duty it became quickly evident that class routines were crucial in helping class management and establishing an effective learning environment.

When planning for my three days, I had prepared all the lessons needed. However, on the first day I found it more difficult than expected to ‘run’ the class in the same way as the associate teacher. After some interactions and discussion with the associate teacher, I realised that I hadn’t been fully aware of many of the seemingly small & incidental aspects of her teaching, which were in fact very measured and considered routines and instructions which she had established over time.

I didn’t really have a full realisation, or prior practical experience of the value of established routines. Therefore, in addition to this, my first-week observations were not focussed on this area. Maybe because I didn’t know what I was actually seeing, or the reasons behind it. I also probably had assumptions that the children were in some aspects managing themselves, when in fact they were operating in the comfort or familiarity of established routines.

When I become a teacher of my own class, if I want to create a better learning environment (and make life easier for myself), it will be important for me to establish routines right from day one. These routines, whatever shape they take, need to be measured, considered, and clear.

Lessons from Practicum 2/5

Sharing Learning Intentions and Student Reflections on Learning
Often, when comparing my time at university with actual school teaching experiences, I have found a lack of links between theory and practice. On this occasion however I saw a fine example of what I had heard talked about, actually being done!

My associate teacher was a firm proponent of sharing ‘targets’ or learning intentions at the beginning of each lesson. He then ensured that students regularly involved themselves in reflective questioning as part of his plenary (ending of a lesson).

I have since read more research about the sharing of learning intentions as part of formative assessment. An excellent book for this is:

Clarke, S., Timperley, H., & Hattie, J. (2003). Unlocking formative assessment: Practical strategies for enhancing students' learning in the primary and intermediate classroom (1st NZ ed.). Auckland: Hodder Moa Beckett Publishers Ltd.

Seven possible reflective questions used were:

• What was your learning intention today?
• What’s something new you learnt today?
• Did you ask inquisitive questions?
• What skills could you improve?
• What did you find difficult?
• What did you enjoy about the session?
• What would you change if we repeated the activity/lesson?

These were often used in the form of students first thinking about the answer to themselves, and then sharing back

1. Think (to self) 30seconds
2. Pair (tell partner) 60seconds
3. Share (whole class) 90seconds

Lessons from Practicum 1/5

YES - This is me!
This practicum was just a few weeks into the beginning of my study. In all honesty, there would have been a lot going on that I wasn’t even capable of seriously observing due to my lack of understanding about what to really look for.

However, the one key thing I gained from this particular experience (with a year 4/5 class) was that YES! This is what I want to do. And that is obviously a very important conclusion to come to early on in my training.

Lessons from Practicum: Intro

I have now completed all five teaching experiences that my education degree course requires. Not only do these provide a multitude of opportunities to both observe and practise teaching and learning, I have found each one has had one significant aspect of teaching that has come to the forefront of my thinking and personal reflection.

So, following this introduction will be a description of one key thing I gained from each of my five practicum.