1. It’s okay not to have an “Amazing” looking classroom. Sometimes I would be somewhat anxious about what my room looked like. It wasn’t full of colour, snazy posters, nor was every inch covered in ‘stuff’. I actually didn’t know what I was supposed to put up. Plus, I didn't really want to put fancy, vibrant and colourful displays up in my room because of the time I’d have to spend doing it. Some of my counterparts had these amazing looking rooms, that I had no way of emulating. Decorating was not (and is still not) one of my strengths. I see people online asking for advice on their display boards. What do you think of this? Where do I start? What do I put up? How does this look? Check out my room! I’m so proud that I spent ALL holidays setting it up! I think this type of conversation can create a culture that builds this pressure in Grads. By seeing so many colourful and vibrant rooms (with lots of teachers spending their own money to make it look “awesome”), I fear Grads see an Amazing looking room is the norm and not the exception. The point I’m trying to make is this: Sure we can take pride in our rooms, but we shouldn’t be stressing about how look & spending our holidays decorating them. What matters is what happens inside that room when the kids are there. A good leader or mentor teacher isn’t going to care if your room looks awesome if you can’t facilitate a quality learning environment where all your students feel safe, supported and experience success. Instead, focus on writing anchor charts & displays that are co-created or fully developed by your students. Be patient, and the room will look after itself. Tips · Avoid feeling stressed about what your room looks like · Ask your Leadership Team what the expectation is for guidance · Check what your schools non-negotiables are in relations to displays and start there. · Focus your energy on developing your teaching. · Be patient and display anchor charts students can refer to during lessons · DON’T SPEND MONEY 2. Don’t spend your money on stuff!! I’m serious. Teachers spend WAY too much money on classroom resources to make their classroom look great. I remember feeling guilty about this. Colleagues had the most amazing looking rooms, but were purchasing things to sparkle it up. Or purchasing resource books or classroom materials. In my head, I was like. Man I’ve had no money for four years trying to get a job. And now I’m meant to be buying things for my job? It didn’t make sense. Why we spend so much money is another topic of conversation in itself. I think to a degree teachers convince themselves it’s for their students. I guess you can argue it is. But is it necessary. Is all that money spent REALLY necessary? Tips. · Find out how well resourced your school is. Is an alternative of what you need already there? · Ask yourself will my kids learn regardless if I buy this? · Don’t be pressured into purchasing things because other staff are (most likely ones earning more money than you) There are alternatives. · Contact staff at your school and see if they have something second hand you can use to save yourself set up time 3. Sign up to Twitter NOW Twitter is the answer to our prayers. There is most certainly experienced, knowledgeable and dynamic teachers in your school. But think about this. Your school is only one of hundreds in Victoria. Thousands in Australia. And there must be thousands of other teachers on planet Earth when you think about it. And crazy enough, you can find the most innovative and dynamic ones on Twitter. I have learnt more in 18 months through Twitter than I have of regular Professional Development in 6 years. I couldn’t tell myself this 8 years ago. Did Twitter even exist then? So you’ll already be up on my 23 year old self. Tips: Follow me and go through all the people I follow and follow them. There are some amazing Australian teachers online. Probably lots I don’t follow. 4. Parents are not the enemy. I am SURE I was never taught about (at least taught enough) how to speak, act around or deal with parents. In my head, I’d built up this us against them mentality. I was so anxious about them judging me. So afraid of giving out my email address. So cautious about what I said, acted, moved or positioned myself around the students. (Maybe the scare tactics of the AEU worked in my last year at Uni. Especially as a male teacher and some of the horror stories I heard) I just about locked myself away in the room and did everything I could not to speak to parents. My motto was AVOID AT ALL COSTS! Especially the time consuming parents. That was a BIG MISTAKE on my behalf. Parents are not the enemy, but your greatest ally. Get outside and meet them. 10 minutes after school at the minimum. Make the effort to engage them. Especially the stand offish ones. Build a relationship with them & get them into the room and help with Reading, marking spelling tests, laminating or helping with other mundane tasks. You will be surprised how many will be keen to help doing this if you make them feel welcome. They will appreciate being involved with their child’s learning. Tips: · Be honest if they ask you if it’s your first year. Otherwise, you’re not obliged to tell them. · Set some clear ground rules and check your school’s policy about parent helpers. · Seek the advice of other colleagues if you ever feel threatened or uncomfortable. · Stand outside your room every morning & evening in the first few weeks. Invest the time with parents early is like starting to save your money at an early age. You will reap the benefits down the track. · Consider using ClassDojo, SeaSaw or something that promotes parent/teacher communication online. It will save you countless phone calls. 5. Ensure you are supported by a mentor teacher I hit the jackpot with my mentor teacher out of pure luck. Other teachers, I know haven’t been so lucky. I’m gobsmacked by what I’ve read online of the lack of support some teachers have. Your mentor teacher should be making time every week to have some kind of informal or formal chat with you. It should be a mandatory in their job description if they’ve undertaken that role. And if they aren’t organising it, you need to be proactive and organise it with them. Acknowledge them in a positive way & don’t let them get out of locking in a time. “Hey, I know you’re busy. But can we grab a coffee sometime and check in with how I’m going. I’d like to hear your advice on a few things to ensure I continue to develop as a teacher. Does Recess on Monday work for you?” It’s imperative you have a strong, supportive and positive role model. Whoever this person is will shape you as a teacher in some way. It needs to be positive! And you might find your designated mentor teacher isn’t the person who mentors you as such. That doesn’t matter. You just need someone to talk to. A simple suggestion from an experienced teacher that has been there and done that will be invaluable when the time comes. · Seek their advice · Ask to observe their teaching. AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. For that matter, watch as many teachers as possible. · If you’re not feeling supported, talk to them about it. You should not go through the year unsupported and your school is doing you a disservice if they aren’t. · If all else fails contact the AEU for advice 6. See your P&D as an investment in your career. According to Scott Pape, the Barefoot Investor (Highly recommend his book) investing time into your performance review will be invaluable in a few years’ time. He sees performance reviews like money. By investing in your own personal development, we are in a sense investing in our financial future. Because personal and professional development in teaching means two things: 1. Our pay goes up every year 2. We give ourselves more of a chance at leadership opportunities in the future (If that’s what you want) · I would have also skipped past this advice at 23. There is a perception among many teachers that our P&D is an inconvenience. Is it the fear of being watched and judged? The fear we might fail it? Our train of thinking in this has been around the wrong way. Not to mention we were one of the few professions that didn’t even have performance reviews until recently. Regardless, I believe on a whole it is viewed negatively. We should see our P&D as an opportunity to set a goal that we can achieve in one year. Furthermore, one or two of these goals can often involve incorporating something we are passionate about into the classroom. Or we could implement an idea or program we’ve seen work elsewhere. And even better, is the accountability factor. Another aspect that is seen as a negative. Being accountable means we will see this goal through. Even if we fail, we don’t actually fail. if we put in effort and demonstrate evidence of taking consistent steps in achieving our P&D goal there is absolutely ZERO chance we can fail. Failing means the opportunity to learning more and gather vital experience that will better us in the following years to come. Tips: · It will take some time to wrap your head around · Work with a colleague or your team and work together on some goals · Plot out a timeline of when you will need to do something towards it. Otherwise, you will be like most people & get to the end of the year and have a mad scramble to finish your P&D. 7. Be aware of Negative Influences This is a big one for me. And is a common trait not just among teachers but people in general. We are so quick to see the negatives in everything. “We don’t get paid enough.” “I never have enough time to do anything” “I don’t agree with that decision”. “Oh so you want to be a teacher? Get use to long hours for the love of the job!” Well actually, as a grad in Victoria you are within the top 1% (Based off the $63, 356 starting wage listed by the department) of the richest people in whole entire population of the world. That means every Teacher in Victoria falls into this category. Conversations about lack of time often stem towards a lack of strategies, structures or systems to manage time effectively. And engaging in negative conversations about the decisions made by our superiors without speaking to them about it is the number one most toxic and harmful thing one can to do the culture of an organisation. There will be people around you who engage in these discussions. (I have even found myself doing this at times) I’m a really positive person in general, but it’s so easy to fall into the trap of developing a negative mindset. Particularly if you’re having a tough run with kids in your Grade. When people talk negatively all the time, you see things negatively. It becomes the norm. And this is toxic and will kill off any enthusiasm you have of being a positive influence on everyone around you. My advice to myself here is that it gets better. And the people who continually complain, mutter under their breath things that are undermining, negative, or whinging or are to be avoided. Your greatest asset as a Grad is your enthusiasm, don’t let it disappear like it has with so many other people because of things that are out of your control. Tips: · Stay positive · Learn from your mistakes (Take on a Growth Mindset) · Seek advice from positive influences – There will always be someone in your organisation who is like this, especially at a big school. · Try not to engage in toxic behaviour 8. Don’t feel guilty about taking a day off You will get sick. You will need an extra day to write reports. Don’t feel bad about taking a sickie if you’re sick. Your kids will survive. You won’t if you don’t stay at home! You get 5 a year without a certificate. I don’t need to give myself advice as a grad here. I knew exactly how many of these days I had and made sure they were used. 9. Focus on your strengths The first thing I noticed about teaching in comparison to my other previous jobs was this: When you look at the clock, it’s not to countdown how many minutes you have until you finish, but how fast time is running out for you to finish something! In the blink of an eye, the day will be over & then it will be holidays. Then the end of the year. You will hear this constantly from colleagues. “God, is it week 9 already?” “Not long now until holidays!” “Hasn’t this year flown.” Guess what, every year goes fast. And how quickly time slips by will impact the way you work because you will begin to find you “never have time for everything.” And this is a good thing. Especially early. Concentrate on nailing an area of your expertise in the classroom first. Something that you are strong in already. Writing, Reading, Spelling, Maths, whatever… Use that as something you can always be positive about and seek advice from other members of staff to help you improve in other areas. As you gain experience, improvement will naturally come. Tips: If you say you’re not good at something, (As I always did in Maths) Guess what? You will suck at Maths! Learn on the job and be honest with your students about how you’re learning with them. They will be super excited about being a classroom expert that can help other students. 10. Get into the staffroom I am grateful to one of my mentors and now good friend for role modelling to me the importance of making the time to be social with staff members at work. When I began, it was almost a race who could get into the staffroom the quickest. That invaluable 30 minutes break needed to be spent relaxing, debriefing or simply just having a conversation with someone. #instantcoffee Seeing others do this embedded it to me as the norm. But now, I often see people staying away from the staffroom to do work. And this, in my opinion is not a good thing. Certainly, I can understand people forming an argument that those 30 minutes could be better spent working on some administration or preparation task. Of course they could be spent doing that. But I don’t know if it’s “better spent”. I would argue in the long run you are doing yourself a disservice. There will come a time when you need someone or might have to have a challenging conversation with a staff member. Those discussions will go better for you if develop those relationships now. A 2 minute conversation about the weather or the footy on the weekend as you make a cup of tea is all it takes. Building relationships with colleagues is imperative to ensuring your mental health and wellbeing stays a priority when things get stressful. And another huge plus is you will enjoy social gatherings a million times more. Tips: · Be a regular in the staffroom · Speak to different people · Say hi to EVERYONE and Smile as much as possible! · Work is a lot easier when your colleagues turn into your friends. Sure, teaching is challenging at times and you will experience a range of emotions. But the pay off at the end of the year is well worth it in the end. Stay positive & everything will work out in the end.
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You’ve heard the saying, “You need a bag of tricks to be a CRT.” It's true. But it doesn’t have to be a suitcase full of worksheets or resources you lug around everywhere. Here are 5 things I believe are essentials for any CRT looking to survive & thrive within a foreign classroom. They might be of use to you this year. 1. A Mobile Phone with a Hotspot Connection I took for granted high speed Wi-Fi internet working at a school. Thrust into the unknown, equipped with my laptop full of good back up plans is a sensational idea, IF you have an internet connection. You cannot count on being able to connect to the internet at school. Come armed with your mobile phone & a hotspot connection. It will save your sanity! The greatest of planned lessons that go horribly wrong can be saved with the following: www. GoNoodle.com (An awesome brain break activity) www.smilingminds.com.au (A great way to calm kids down after lunch) www. ed.ted.com/ (Awesome educational videos on a range of topics. www. getkahoot.com/ (Great if you are in a 1:1 Ipad environment) Not that any qualified teacher would ever want to kill time, but on days where things were headed south for whatever reason, these were great to kill 20 minutes. If you’re starting to struggle with their attention or behaviour, it's great to have some kind of fall back alternative.
4. Wellbeing, Teamwork & Literacy Games If you’ve never heard of Robert Marzarno, he is a guru in education in America and written a heap of books filled with research (and teacher jargon!) . The first one my Leadership Team bought never got opened) In hindsight, that probably wasn’t the smartest move. What is relevant is that Marzano talks about the keys for Engagement within the classroom.
The 4 points that are relevant all can be incorporated into two of my favourite teaching programs of all time. Wilson McKaskills Play is the Way program, which teaches social interaction, communication, Wellbeing, resilience etc in the form of Games WHICH ARE ALL AWESOME! And secondly, literacy Games based on the VCOP & Big Write program. You do not need to know about VCOP to play quality and engaging Literacy Games but it’s awesome nonetheless.
Final Thought: THE MORE GAMES YOU KNOW THAT AREN’T JUST SILENT BALL OR DODGEBALL THE BETTER 5. CONFIDENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The best piece of advice I’ve ever heard is about how easy it is to make a good impression by portraying and even faking confidence. Imagine you saw some flash new car pull up on the side of a road at a school. The guy who climbs out is wearing an expensive looking suit, designer sunnies and a cool haircut. You might think ‘who is that guy?’ But in truth, this guy is a primary school teacher that has rented the suit and car for a wedding. Neverthless, without that information, you might feel impressed. What’s the point of this story? Appearances matter! And I’m not talking about what you wear. I’m talking about your demenour. If you walk into a school with confidence, smile and look everyone in the eye, you will make a good impression. Just the same as you would a job interview. Even more beneficial, is the chances are the person greeting you will react with a smile and a warm and welcoming demeanour, which will alleviate some of your fears and make you confident. And in a way, each day you turn up to a new school is a potential job interview down the track. How many CRT’s have gotten full time positions at schools after firstly CRT’ing for some time? LOTS. Cons: Walking into a staffroom can be the most intimidating thing on planet earth. Pros: You will be remembered and asked back. The thing to remember is if you’re walking into a school as a CRT, you ARE qualified and capable. If you worry about not knowing enough or are somewhat unprepared, well guess what? I’ve taught for 7 years and most days of working as a CRT had no idea what I was doing! And you know what? I loved every second of it because I had a kit full of these 5 things that could fill an entire day if I needed to. If you want to know more about my thoughts about Casual Relief Teachers, check out this: I love it when you go to a PD and when you leave you think, "man, I was seriously meant to be at that PD. It is like a sign or something!"
Well that happened this week. After listening to a Hugh Van Cuylenburg from the Resilience Project present his keynote speech at the ACHPER conference this week, I am seriously inspired. Everything he said struck a chord with me. I never worked in a school in India like Huhg. But I've been there. And I'll never forget the moment walking through the poverty stricken streets of Delhi how much I wanted to go home. Not to mention how lucky I realised I had it in Australia. How some weeks, my biggest worry was how many kicks I had on a saturday during a local footy game. Water, food, shelter... not to mention the privileged position I was in as a teacher... I I just took so much for granted. He's 100% correct in how easily everyone notices the negatives in their life. I see it every day at work. People talking about things (complaining or worrying) about stuff that doesn't really matters. I am also a culprit in doing this. But I think I've gotten better at recognising when I'm doing it. In fact, a part of my own ACHPER session discussed my belief that teachers are the worst in applying negative perceptions to the connotations of what it means to be a teacher. For example, how many times have you heard. "I'm exhausted." "I'm so undervalued." "I'm so underpaid." "I work so many long hours." "I was up all night and hardly got anything done." "I never have time for anything" "We used to do that but now I don't because I'm too busy." Does this sound familiar? Even more crazy, was his thoughts on being grateful & how to be grateful. How empathy for others and when you be nice to someone actually releases oxytocin in your brain (which is scientifically proven to make you feel good). This made me think of something my colleage instigated out our school called "Take the time" where people could write a nice message to someone on staff and leave it in their pigeon hole. I thought it was a great idea! However, i remember hearing comments of people asking 'so what happens if you don't get one yourself?' Totally missing the point! Anyway, I am inspired to take parts of this back to my school & even my footy club. Some of these techniques and strategies can be applied instantly to make people see how many positives are in their lives daily. Not to mention how lucky we are. I loved the story of the little Indian boy that couldn't speak English, but always pointed at something and said "Dis" as in how good is this. I reckon I'll keep saying it for months now! Things I am grateful for today. 1. My job. 2. My little boy. 3. The coffee next to me. http://theresilienceproject.com.au/ |
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