My Educational Journey

Mind Map of Professional Connections NB: The dotted lines, although hard to follow, show what areas are connected to one another. During the process the majority of connections were made from me as the Year 4-8 classroom teacher. (Click the image to zoom in) Evaluation of impact two professional connections have had on my practice and professional community. 1. Within the School Connection is the Principal. She is a young and reasonably new principal of a very small school. By having a close working relationship with her, she has given me more responsibility and allowed me to be a part of different runnings of the school. She sees my potential and constantly phrases me on the job I am doing and is helping me to development into a school leader. Her style of leadership is both Distributed and Situational as with the trust she now has, she distributes responsibility out depending on the situation. Because of how she leads, I feel like a valued member of the school. The pr...

My Community of Practice Domain: Learning needs of a particular target group or learning focus. Community: Interested and involved groups of people working together to achieve a common goal. Practice: Practitioners who interact, communicate, assess, and plan for the needs of the Domain. Critically analyse your professional community of practice: 1. What are the current issues in your community of practice? How would you or your community of practice address them? A current issue is trying to close the gap in the assessment results for writing. Results are showing a large number of students are underachieving in this area, however, this could also be a result of assessment methods and interpretations of marking schedules being different. The community is looking at how each individual school within the Rotorua Central Cluster Community of Learning Schools assesses, plans, and delivers writing and then trying to find a more consistent way for the 5 schools in the...

What is/are the points in the article that you can relate to your reflective practice? Initially when entering into the world of teaching, I had no idea of how to reflect on my practice. A very close colleague of mine, who also became my Tutor Teacher, provided me with a BT Reflective Journal that she had put together. In this journal I had to record on a weekly basis "What went well", "What didn't go well", and "What I could do to improve the situation or my practice". By following these three simple questions, I found my reflective journal became a valuable resource when problem solving from year to year and class to class. As the years have gone by I have not only reflected on my own self and practices, but also on particular students (normally target students), colleagues, relationship building, and community connections. Lynda Finlay (2008) touched on this regarding the debate to "focus on self" or to "focus on a larger context...

At the beginning of this course back in July 2015, one of the activities we were required to do was ask ourselves which Key Competencies we felt were strengths and which we felt needed developing. There are three that I felt were my strengths: Managing Self, Relating to Others, and Participating and Contributing. The Key Competency that I felt less competent with was Using Language, Symbols and Text. The Key Competencies I felt I have focussed on the most over the last 24 weeks of studying with the MindLabs have been Thinking, Managing Self, and Participating and Contributing. These haven't just been focussed on for course requirements, but I have found I have had to focus on these areas regarding family and work as well. The two key areas of change I have made in my own practice has been to: 1. Step aside and observe my student's needs and direct them to solve problems on their own but with some guidance, allowing them to feel comfortable about making mistakes as th...

As part of a Postgraduate Certificate Course in Applied Practice in Context through the MindLabs and Unitech, I am required to do weekly blog entries sharing my experiences, and critiquing and evaluating my teaching practices. My first blog entry is about me as a teacher. I have been teaching for 6 years and with the basis of my philosophy being: “ My classroom is a place for learning. My students learn from me and I learn from my students. It is a place for reciprocal learning and teaching .” My career started as a Year 8 teacher in a co-educational setting for my first year. This was followed by me seeing a need for a Girls Only Class and setting this environment up in my second year of teaching. I spent the next 4 years perfecting my practice in an environment of young adolescent girls, providing them with the needs they required to grow into Strong Young Woman, which become our classroom motto. As the basis of my philosophy says, I learnt lots from my...