Jenny Neville Teaching Portfolio

Professional Engagement: Standard Six

Engage in professional learning

Teaching standard 6.3:

Engage with colleagues and improve practice: seek and apply constructive feedback from supervisors and teachers to improve teaching practices:

Personal growth and development is essential as a teacher. As you help others develop, so to, do others help you. This is partly why advice and guidance are so important, particularly when you are finding your feet not only in the classroom, but in the education system as a whole. By being open and inviting of feedback, different perspectives are often offered,  helping to highlight what you may otherwise be oblivious to. Even the smallest suggestion can cause major shifts in perspectives and see the creativity cogs cranking over new found ideas. 

Whilst on prac I had the fortunate experience of having two great mentors who were open to my ideas and willing to help in refining them. They offered suggestions as to how best carry them out all the while keeping the essence of what I wanted to achieve. Written lesson critiques only made up a small fraction of the feedback my mentors provided me. Credit was given when credit was due as were tips and advice. Most of all the wealth of knowledge and approachability was incredible. My frustration I expressed after a less than average lesson on fractions was only greeted with positivity and understanding. The words ‘remember that you are not the first to teach them fractions nor will you be the last’, settled my emotions as I realised despite being a poor lesson, it was not the end of the world! It also reminded me that such lessons are an essential part of my learning and offer excellent feedback as to what not to do in a lesson, providing a strong position to move on from.

In addition to these mentors I had the privilege of working with different relief teachers, who also openly invited my ideas and willingly collaborated with me in conducting various lessons.  The value of these experiences cannot be understated and being fortunate to have such supportive working relationships, I am interested in pursuing some form of team teaching in the future.

My regular visits from my prac supervisor were also a welcomed event. I was always keen to show her my new approach to behaviour management or inform her of the ways I had thought of to conduct 3 spelling tests at once. Basically I really wanted to reflect the fact that I had valued her feedback and tried to integrate it into my teaching since her last visit. This was often recognised and comprehensive feedback for the next lesson witnessed moved on to mention other details to focus on.

One experience that stands out and enables me to demonstrate Teaching Standard 6.3, is when I arrived at school one Wednesday to be greeted by a relief teacher, one who I had never worked with and had hardly conversed with. Racing through my daily work pad and lesson ideas of the day, it was not long before we were stalled on my maths lesson, which was focusing on plotting Census data onto a scatterplot….

’And how are you going to hook them?’, asked the teacher.

‘I was planning on showing them a Matheletics clip about scatterplots and then talk about line of best fit’, I replied. (Even as I said it alarm bells were ringing, Boring! Boring!).

‘Yeah you could, but how can we relate scatterplots to them and show how and why they are useful?’ responded the teacher.

Lost for ideas, I was disappointed not to be able to offer something interesting and show the teacher I was savvy young up and coming educator. Looking at the data I had prepared for the students which included categories such as height, weight, favourite food and arm span, we arrived at an idea together. With the help of the aptly named relief teacher, in no time at all, my entire maths lesson had morphed into a forensic science murder and scatterplot investigation, where correlation between height and arm span was being investigated. The students loved it. They were hooked from word go and despite my reservations about it being a bit dark or disturbing, not one of them showed any sign of disturbance! The lesson continued well and the students were able to use their data to predict the height, and even gender of a body whose arm span was the only known.

The scenario described above shows how working with others can really transform your lessons and also your teaching approaches as your perspectives are widened and new ideas feed more new ideas. Personal expertise and experience is a valuable resource that can’t just be downloaded from the net or read in a book. It is what is shared through relating and connecting with people. Openly sharing and willingly working with others in an effort to provide the students with a unique and engaging and FUN experience is what embodied learning is all about. I am sure that the students remember the maths lesson and hopefully know how to accurately represent data in a scatterplot.

To ensure that I keep developing as a teacher, I have to be comfortable being the learner. This is something I feel I am capable of, and enjoy being. I not only value feedback but the chance to reflect upon it and incorporate its lessons into my own teaching and beyond. My experiences have shown me that by simply connecting and conversing with people there is a wealth of insight and support known and unknowingly shared. I look forward to continuing developing connections with other teachers and develop a strong network of supportive colleagues who are able to offer advice and feedback openly, and meeting new sources of inspiration through undertaking various professional and personal development.  

Speaking with other teachers, the desire to share and advise with one another more intentionally has been expressed. It seems that due to pressures of the job that teacher connections and ensuing support becomes less of a priority. If I notice this to be a common issue, it would be great to attempt to form some sort of support and advice group for teachers to meet on a semi regular basis. I understand that this maybe ambitious but even if it could occur intentionally on an informal basis occasionally, this would be great. I can see the benefits for staff comradeship, training, development and stress levels already!