Who are the stakeholders of your professional community? In what ways do they influence your practice?
As stated in Wegner-Trayner's (2015) article 'Communities of Practice, a brief introduction' a community need three things for it to be a community of practice; must have a shared domain of interest, must engage in discussions, activities, help each other and share information, and must be practitioners that share resources. Below are four stakeholders involved in my professional community.
Senior Management: Senior Management's main role is to ensure the running of the school. In a direct link to me, they set targets as a whole school and are accountable to the Board of Trustees. They share this information at staff meetings and we discuss how we can create effective teaching and learning for the children. They also provide a space for us to learn. The staff are involved with re-visioning a school, and as a consequence, have embarked on this learning journey to learn about 21st century learning. We are able to learn, experiment, and change practice to try and develop what's effective for Grey Lynn School.
Team Leader: This is where most of my professional and personal conversations happen. Quite often my personal life can cross over with my professional life in terms of values, beliefs, attitudes etc. I have full trust and faith in my team leader and that makes me feel really comfortable with my personal and professional life when they cross-over. I am able to talk and get help when needed. Also she shares resources, observes my lessons and gives feedback and offers support.
Teaching Team: As a team we share resources and knowledge to better our practice. We also provide support for each other when things break down e.g someone watches my class when I need to deal with special needs child in my class. We meet fortnightly in which our Team Leader will relay things back to the team from Management meeting and cover other things of concern.
Students: Children are the core of our profession. They bring with them past experiences and prior knowledge which mould my practice. I believe in child-centred learning and lessons are built around their interests or what I think they may like. I engage with children to discuss learning intentions, give feedback and discuss next learning steps. We also engage in sharing resources e.g children have the ability to bring to class learning tools that they've discovered at home. They discuss with me what the tools can do and how we can apply them to our learning.
What is the purpose and function of your practice? In what ways do you cater for the community of your practice?
(GLSa, 2015)
The school vision underpins everything that we do at Grey Lynn School. My practice, beliefs and values, and research need to align with the school vision. The teaching staff wrote the vision collectively at the beginning of the year. Everything that I do at school is in line with what they vision says.
The first part of our vision talks about 'Respect', respect for other's ideas, the environment and ourselves. The idea is that our school is a safe place to work where everyone is heard. When collaborating with my community of practice I know that my ideas will be heard because that's what our vision states. If they're not, I can bring up the school vision.
The second part talks about 'Resilience'. The ability to take risks can be difficult but have much reward. If my ideas are respected, as mentioned above, then it's easier for me to take risks because I know I'm not being judged. I also need to be open to feedback, even when I don't like what it may be. I need to remind myself that feedback is to better my practice, not stunt it.
Positive relationships are built so that the teaching and learning environment is healthy. It's important for me to have positive relationships with the different people of my learning community. As the least experienced person I pull on their knowledge and expertise to help me.
Child-centred learning is important to Grey Lynn School. Every decision that we make in regards to teaching and learning has the best intentions with the children in mind. The goal is for better learning outcomes for children.
Grey Lynn teachers have the ability to practice what they preach. Our principal has been open to new learning and has allowed us to trial BYOD and study at Mind Lab to get a better understanding of 21st century learning pedagogy.
(GLSb, 2015)
As an individual, these are my responsibilities.
-As apart of the Inner-City Rugby tournament I coached the rugby team.
-Catering to diversity in the school and instilling culture I take the Kapa Haka group.
-Another way to enhance school culture I am involved with taking school singing.
-To promote road safety around our school I lead the travel wise. This is run by a group of students who collaborate on ideas to promote certain events and carry them out.
What are the core values that underpin your profession and how?
(GLSc, 2015)
At Grey Lynn we have six core values that underpin what we do. These values were written as a collaborative effort by all staff at school.
Working in a safe environment is important to me. Growing up I was never raised to speak up when things didn't seem right, you never answered back to authority and you never spoke unless you were spoken too. For me to speak in staff and team meetings I have to feel pretty confident about the environment I'm in. Due to my background, I too give respect to others who have ideas and want to share without judgement because I know how anxious I can get.
Celebrating diversity is important to me. Learning from a cultural context was not something I'd ever experienced until I went to high school. I had already learnt bad learning habits, I'd never really developed any learning strategies and struggled in school. At a primary school level I feel it important for children to be able to bring who they are to the classroom and use that as a bases for learning, especially those who struggle academically.
Personally, I've learned to be open to new learning and this year has been a massive journey for me. Studying at Mind Lab has helped me to broaden my horizons and show me that I can continue to learn, even when things get tough. I've learned that there is always something valuable that you can gain from new learning. Obviously new learning that I gain trickles down to the children.
As a teaching team I think we do a really good job at working together. I fully trust my team and know that when things difficult I have them to guide me.
Respect, resilience and responsibility are key principals we live by at Grey Lynn school. In everything we do we try to display these things. Respect to teachers and students when sharing, resilience when things get hard and show responsibility when working.
Taking risks aren't easy. This term we started Genius Hour. This is where children have one hour to learn about anything they want. For me this was a risk because I didn't know how to teach it, the outcomes were going to be different for the children and some would finish quicker than others. What could I do? I took a risk and tried to stick to a plan I made, which went out the window. The children's favourite part of their week is Genius Hour. Moving forward, I'm going to try and teach the inquiry model to help guide their learning.
References
Wegner, E., & Trayner, B. (2015) Introduction to Communities of Practice. Retrieved from http://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/
GLSa. (2015) School Vision. [Screen Shot] Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/a/greylynn.school.nz/grant-ppp/gls-professional-documents
GLSb. (2015) School Responsibilities. [Screen Shot] Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/a/greylynn.school.nz/grant-ppp/job-description-responsibilities
GLSc. (2015) Grey Lynn's Six Core Values. [Screen Shot] Retrieved from from https://sites.google.com/a/greylynn.school.nz/grant-ppp/gls-professional-documents
No comments:
Post a Comment