Resolving "CRTs are lesser teachers" with the potential to be a top-class educator.

For a while now the main theme of the Wodonga Network's blog and YouTube channel has been the professional identity of casual teachers.

As we all are aware after having worked as a casual teacher for a few months, the opinion of CRTs in many schools, and indeed entire education systems, can be pretty low.  The "standard" view is often "lesser teacher" or, at it's worst, "glorified babysitter".  Over the years I've come to understand that this is a culturally ingrained view.  I need to strongly stress that this cultural view is held by both sides of the fence.  It's not just Schools and government authorities who are the issue here, it's us too.

It doesn't take long for many enthusiastic graduates to have that enthusiasm taken away when they step into the role of CRT.  Evolutionary psychology describes our minds as "a set of information-processing machines that were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter–gatherer ancestors".  Our evolutionary reflex is to adapt to our surroundings and often the easiest way to do this is to accept the mantle of "lesser teacher".  To forget that we are university trained to be professional educators and adopt the role that's expected of us.

Of course, like our student's coping mechanisms, this has the negative side effect of actively blocking the growth of high class knowledge and skill, preventing you from developing a strong and valuable professional identity.  The key is to accept the situation but not accept the cultural expectation as truth.  This sounds counter-intuitive to many but it provides you with a solid position to effect change.

By accepting the situation you become far more aware of the ways in which to deal with it.  By refusing to accept the moniker of "lesser teacher" as truth, however, it opens up a vast array of pathways to growth because you come to understand that how you need to act is not who you are or what you want.  You know where you are and where you want to go and you can start systematically removing the barriers between you and your intended destination.

I'm a CRT.  In fact I identify myself as a "career CRT" which raises a lot of eyebrows.  The one thing I've never done is that I've never accepted myself as a "lesser teacher", only the fact that occasionally I need to act like one to meet the expectations of classroom teachers and schools.  Of course that's a little meaningless without describing where it's gotten me.

Well, I have teachers who specifically ask for me to replace them because they respect my skill as an educator.  I have classroom teachers stopping me to discuss struggling students because I'm considered a skilled colleague.  I hold two non-school Leadership positions as VIT CRT Network Coordinator and even though these are voluntary positions I am accepted as a teacher with leadership ability by schools.  I've become a skilled and effective literacy tutor and also a provider of professional development workshops for teachers.

None of which says "just a CRT", "lesser teacher" or "glorified babysitter".

Avoid accepting second best from yourself even when that's all the rest of the world expects from you.  When everyone else expects a lesser teacher?  Change their expectations, not your own.

Regards,

Mel.

Why you should use MyPD on MyVIT.

It's leading up to registration again and we are getting requests from many for dates and times of PD they have attended with us. No matter how organized you are? Things happen! In one case one of our members lost all of their PD records in a house fire.

As a Network there's a limit to what we can help you replace when things go wrong. We can give you dates and times but we can't help you recover your notes or your reflections. Sitting down and entering your PD periodically into MyPD gives you protection when things all go pear-shaped! If you lose your PD records, or they are destroyed for reasons out of your control, VIT is still safely keeping a copy of it for you.

This will ensure that no matter what happens your re-registration remains safe and hastle free even in the face of adversity.

To get your MyVIT account:

https://my.vit.vic.edu.au/TEACHERS/Account.aspx/SignIn?ReturnUrl=%2fTEACHERS%2fHome.aspx%2fIndex

Select the appropriate link under "I don't have a MyVIT account" and follow the instructions to create your account.

Regards,

Mel.

Just graduated and becoming a CRT? Welcome to the madhouse!

It's that time of year again and mid-year graduates are heading out into the CRT workforce.  Some of the most common questions we get asked at the Wodonga CRT Support Network revolve around "exactly what's my job as a CRT?"  This usually revolves around short-term non-contract work and I thought I'd provide a few of the more common answers new CRTs are looking for.

I really can't stress strongly enough that first and foremost it's not "your job" when you are in classrooms for short periods, it's you doing someone else's job.  In this sort of work it's really important (usually for your own sanity as much as any other reaosn) to understand that classroom teachers don't get to do whatever they'd like to either.  They have a curriculum to work to, their students have individual learning styles they need to plan around, school initiatives and policies to follow and so on.  They need to get to know their students and then plan an adequate path that meets their schools guidelines and initiatives to get all of their students to where they need to be by the end of the year.

As CRTs we hold a great potential to throw a rather large spanner in the works.  A day here and a day there without the plan being followed adequately and suddenly the class can be thrown into disarray.  The teacher finds themselves having to do extra work to re-plan for the short term to get them all back on track and this is something that the teachers, and the schools they work for, aren't likely to view in a positive light!

While you often won't be recognised for following someone else's lesson plan perfectly, it's when things don't go quite according to plan that you get your chance to shine.  Being good at your job is more than teaching the lesson, it's teaching it in an enjoyable and engaging way that ensures the knowledge transferrs to the students effectively.  This invariably sees you finishing some sections early and you are able to throw those few extras into the mix.  The time fillers from your bag of tricks and even full-blown lessons of your own design.

The key to having teachers and schools aware of your skills is communication.

Communicating with the teachers you replace and the schools you work in should not be seen as optional.  It's their job to communicate a lesson plan and other appropriate information to you and it's your job to communicate to them how you followed through on it, what you weren't able to follow through on and why.  Even if you are in a school that you don't feel is holding up their end of the bargain you should still do your best to hold up yours.

Don't let formal communication be the limit of how you inform teachers and schools of who you are as a Teacher!

• Communicate your dedication to teaching by always being 15 minutes early!
• Communicate respect for the teacher by cleaning off whiteboards etc and leaving their desk as tidy as when you arrived!
• Communicate your professionalism by providing a full day of engaged learning in the best and the worst of circumstances.

Open lines of communication are, by far, the most effective way for you to break the mould and step away from the moniker of "just a CRT" and the implied "lesser teacher" label that is all to often applied to us.


Regards,

Mel.

Scootle for CRTs.

Learn, teach and collaborate using digital resources to support the Australian Curriculum 

Scootle is an online tool for teachers that offers resources, teaching and testing tools and a community to enable professional networking to build your PLN. 

Scootle User Guide for Teachers.

Scootle comes in 2 main parts:-  a bank of resources and tools and "scootle community" which is a little like Facebook but restricted to teachers.

The bank of resources is well organized by curriculum area or as an alphabetical list and there's a lot there.  They are also linked to the "Learning Paths" (lesson design tool) and "Improve" (a bank of pre-generated tests for students).  It's best to explore it than have it explained to you so I'll bow out at that point.

Scootle Community is a lot like Facebook and blogs all rolled into one but for professionals (more like LinkedIn if you are familiar with that).

Your account gives you:

• A basic profile to fill in.
• Notifications and messaging.
• The ability to join or create groups.
• the ability to create connections with other users (like "friends" on facebook).
• The ability to set events.
• A basic blog.

Overall it seems like it's going to be worth while for CRTs to join, especially if they work a lot of contracts or are looking at full-time work later on and want access to the lesson planning tools and other resources.  Scootle also promises to be a great tool for professional networking by creating connections and joining the groups that suit your professional learning needs.

Joining Scootle as a CRT!

Of course as CRTs we often don't have Edumail accounts which is the primary way to join up with scootle.  CRTs instead join by contacting their state relevant authority.

In Victoria  you should email digital.content@edumail.vic.gov.au and request an account.

If you are using this link to open your email program it will automatically fill in the Subject line for you.  If you are doing it manually you should use the subject line "Scootle query".   You should also make sure you include your VIT registration number in the email as this is used to verify that you are a registered Victorian teacher and eligible for an account.  Having it in there right up front will expedite the process.

After you have been verified you will be sent an email with a link to activate your Scootle account!

Other states will have a different jurisdictional authority and you should email help@scootle.edu.au and ask to be directed to the authority for your state.

I've jumped in and created a network for Casual Teachers and invite everyone to join me!

In the future VIT will also be creating a group specifically for Victorian CRTs and it sounds like there's some exciting plans afoot so we should all keep an eye out for that one too ;).

Regards,

Mel.

Victorian CRTs: Getting Access to Edumail.

This is kind of important as many DEECD online resources are locked behind an Edumail account which helps them ensure that only teachers join!  Many of these resources are supremely useful for CRTs as much as any other teacher and it's worth while strolling through them and using quite a few of the things on offer.

In 2010 the DEECD acknowledged the need for many CRTs to have access to Edumail accounts. At that time they sent out a notification to all Victorian principals suggesting that any CRT expected to work 30 days or more in a single school should be supplied with a local Edumail account through that school.  While this is far from an ideal set of parameters it gets at least some of us access.

All too often when I've asked about getting one, even though the school is essentially willing to give me one, there's not a great lot of information out there on how it should be done.  So I recently talked with a techie at a local school, who I know has arranged for edumail accounts for CRTs, exactly how it's done.  The first thing he said right up front is "There's no option to give a CRT an Edumail account which is why many find it confusing".

So:

1. You need to be expected to work for 30 days or more for the school in a year.
2. You will usually need to be proactive and ask for an edumail account as it is not yet a widespread practice.
3. You may also have to explain how it's done!
4. You need authorization from a member of school hierarchy (there may be multiple staff able to provide this).
5. You need to be given an Edumail account as a "Visiting Teacher".
6. You need to remind the school not to delete your account at the start of a new year OR to have it reinstated (the techie wasn't sure whether they naturally expire or remain in place until deleted).

Having an Edumail account will give you easier and deeper access to many online sources of activities, lessons and online professional development materials.

Regards,

Mel.

July 2013 Professional Practice magazine - expanding on a few things.

I woke up this morning and shuffled down to my computer to find an email from VIT waiting for me with the latest Professional Practice magazine.  It's got something in it that I thought would be a good thing to recap on.

From the 'Renewing your Registration" section:

When thinking about the relevance of your PD activities for renewal of registration, the question to ask is:

How does this activity support or enhance my professional knowledge and practice to improve the learning of my students?

This question allows activities to be relevant to the teaching context. However, if the connection between knowledge, practice and student learning cannot be made then the activity cannot be used for renewal of registration.

Apart from evidence to show you have undertaken the hours of PD activities for renewal of registration, you need to be able to show they reference the standards. To do this you can write a brief reflection about the activity explaining what you learnt and how you have or will apply it to your teaching practice to support the learning of your students.
Some questions to guide your reflection

• Which standard/s is most clearly related to this PD activity?
• What have you learnt from the PD activity that you could use to develop your teaching knowledge and/or practice?
• How will this PD activity contribute to your ability to meet the learning needs of your students?
• Which ideas from this PD activity will assist you in challenging and engaging your students more effectively in learning?
• What obstacles might you find to applying these ideas?
• What do these ideas contribute to the broader learning of students within your grade/subject area?
• How could these ideas be shared with colleagues or applied by you and your colleagues to contribute to teaching and learning in your school?
• What further learning does this activity prompt for you?

This is great info!  What's missing is exactly what a "PD activity" is.  Experience has taught us that there's quite a few teachers out there who are quite hazy on this one!  Last year we created a number of posts to help many understand that PD is about a lot more than sitting in front of a presenter using some standard, and some not so standard, examples.  Before you start I again suggest having a couple of those "Validating PD" pro-formas handy!

Posts to revisit:

PD and YOU - A look at why PD is considered necessary and a little on how VIT approaches it.

Teacher Identified PD - A look at why Teacher Identified PD is just as important as the PD selected by schools for their entire staff.

What is PD part 1.
What is PD part 2.
What is PD part 3.

The above 3 posts are about sources of PD besides workshops or online courses.  They provide some specific examples and a bit of a discussion based on the genre of the examples.

Collegial Learning Part 1
Collegial Learning Part 2
Collegial Learning part 3
Collegial Learning part 4

These 4 are about the ways in which collegial PD, learning from your colleagues, forms an inportant part of your professional development and why you should consider it an important aspect to include in your overall PD strategy.

Some of this we would do a little better on now, being a year down the road as Bloggers, but it's pretty much all there.  A few of the older links are also no longer working but it's going to take a few days to find links to alternate resources to fill the gaps!

Over the next little while we'll be doing a few posts about some other related topics and hopefully it won't take us any more than a few days.  We encourage you to join the blog as a follower if you have a Google account (gmail, youtube, google+, etc) or follow it by email otherwise.  There are tools in the side bar for both of these things and they will help keep you notified of when new posts appear on the blog.   

Note:  Follow by email is completely anonymous!  We do not get access to the emails of people using this tool.

Have any thoughts?  Please feel free to comment (if the comments box is not visible click on the "X comments" link under the post)!  No user account required!

Regards,

Mel.

Wodonga CRT Support Network Validating PD pro-forma.

Hi everyone,

The following couple of posts will be dealing with the July issue of Professional Practice magazine and Teacher Registration in Victoria.  We wanted to revisit a few old posts to expand on one of the things the magazine discusses.

We thought it would be a good idea to give Vic CRTs a bit of a reminder about the Wodonga CRT Support Network's Validating PD pro-forma.  This is a simple pro-forma designed for Teachers to use as they participate in PD to help them sort out their reflections on PD.



This will be updated when VIT adpots the National Standards to reflect the new 7 standards (and any supporting documentation) to be in line with VIT's registration processes.

You can either download this proforma directly to your computer (.doc format) or print it to a PDF file which will then open in Adobe Reader (or your alternate PDF viewer) to be printed.

For the following couple of posts we suggest you have a few of them handy!  The over-reaching topic as well as individual examples in some posts are all education related and we're sure many of you will get PD worthy ideas out of them.

At the end of this group of posts I will be providing a completed example using one of the things that will come up in these posts.

Regards,

Mel.

Looking at Free online PD: Open2study.com

Open2study is a free online learning center backed by Open Universities Australia.

The first thing I did was sign up for a couple courses to have a good look at how everything works and immerse myself in the experience.


So how does it work?

Like most of these kinds of services you sign up for a free account and then sign up for individual courses through that account.  Open2Study uses a "four module" format for most of it's courses.  You are able to complete one module a week over 4 weeks and very few are self-paced (which I will deal with below).  Courses which are not self-paced open assessments at the rate of one module per week.

You apply for courses as they are announced.  If you miss an application for the current course, you will have to wait until the next session of that course is announced in order to join.  Once you have joined however, you can complete open modules up until the closing date.  This means that while you can't "jump ahead" you can catch up if you need to leave a module until later.

Each module consists of a number of videos delivered by a qualified teacher/instructor to be watched each week..  Once you are signed up for a course you will receive access to all of the videos and you can watch them as many times as you like at any time you like.  After the course completes you are also given access to the videos for a limited period of time.

Most videos are followed by a single multiple choice question that is not used in your assessment.

When a module is opened to assessment you will then be given access to 5 multiple choice questions for that module.  You will have 3 attempts at these questions and the best of these 3 scores will be used for your assessment score.

You need a grade of 60% in order to pass a module (3/5).

To pass the course you have to get an overall score of 60% (12/20).  You are allowed to miss one module out of the four but this means you must score high enough on the other modules to still achieve an overall score of 12/20.  They do not take into account that you missed a module.

If you pass a course you will be sent a printable certificate via email.  If you fail a course you are able to sign up for the course again in the next round.

Some modules have a "Self Paced" banner across the top corner.  You can apply for these courses at any time (you don't have to wait for it to "open") and also complete them as fast or as slow as you would like.


What courses are there?

There are currently 21 courses on offer and when I first started looking at the site there was only 6.  They are coming out with about 3 new courses every 5 weeks so the collection is steadily growing.

You can see all the courses currently on offer here.


How does this fit in with teacher PD?

There are a wide range of courses on offer that are education related including specific education topics, psychology and I.T. based courses.

Some of the topics I looked at are obviously aimed at high school leavers.  I signed up for the course and just dropped out after looking at the videos and it was obvious that I wasn't going to learn anything new.  They offered me a different perspective to reflect on the information I already have on the subject but by and large I didn't learn anything new.

Unfortunately, while I found it useful to watch the video, there was rarely anything in these courses that made me reflect on anything I did in any really meaningful way. Some others however allowed me to brush up on areas of study I haven't been involved in since university and they provided a fresh perspective that really made me think.

Other courses actually taught me a lot.  They contained up-to-date information that taught me a thing or two and really gave me pause to think on and how it relates to the way I teach or interact with colleagues and the greater educational community.

In the end I found it a little hit and miss so until you sign up for something you won't really know what you're getting.  This seems to be only a matter of an inconvenience though and it's not going to damage you in any way if you sign up and then realise that the course just isn't for you.


What didn't I like?

Having ventured into video myself, I can see some, but by no means all, of the presenters struggling in the same way that I still sometimes do.  They have a bit of a problem relating to the fact that the camera isn't really a camera, it's a whole lot of people behind the lens.  This makes some of them a little disengaging to watch or listen to and staying engaged with the topic through them can be a little bit of a "hard slog" at times.  The information is good and useful but it's just clear that they aren't comfortable with the camera yet.

Other than that I generally look forward to seeing what courses they will bring out next but I do have to accept that the new ones aren't always relevant to me as a teacher.


Open2Study Vs other online PD.

One of the largest complaints we receive from people completing online PD is that the lack of people to discuss the issues with can be a very limiting factor, especially for CRTs who aren't in schools every day.  An online PD that's supposed to take 3 weeks sees them taking 5 or 6 simply because they lack enough collegial support to straighten things out in their heads.

These courses are pretty sharp and to the point and I didn't really find this an issue.  They aren't trying to enlighten you on an in-depth level, just help you come to grips with certain aspects of that they are teaching.  They keep the topics quite well defined and don't wander into the peripheries that can make these things confusing.  Video helps in this respect because it's got to be watchable, not continue on for 3 hours about every little nook and cranny like document-based PD can.


To sum it all up.

Like anything of this nature it's going to be of more use to some than to others.  It's a while since I started exploring Open2Study and I'm still going back occasionally, looking to see if anything interesting has come up.  Despite the negatives I see the fact that I am staying interested means it's probably well worth keeping an eye on.

A lot of the stuff isn't rocket science by any means but I have learnt new things and it's provided a reason to reflect on what I already know on a number of occasions too.

I recommend at least checking it out once or twice ;).

regards,

Mel.

Officeworks: Coming through for local CRTs for a second year!

Through the Officeworks Corporate Responsibility program, individual stores are able to support local groups that aim to increase the quality of local living.  For the second year in a row Officeworks Wodonga is lending some much needed support to assist is in helping local CRTs to be the best they can be!

Have you attended a meeting or one of our PD workshops in the last year?  If you have you will notice that the bags we supply resources for workshops in are Officeworks bags.  In them are notepads, pens, pencils and other assorted goodies.  There are coloured pencils and textas on tables if needed too.  The majority of these supplies have been given to us by Officeworks through their program  In our meetings, there are also notepads, pens and pencils on offer if you need them.  Again, all thanks to Officeworks.  In certain schools you'll also notice our posters and business cards in plastic stands.  The plastic stands and the paper the posters are printed on are also supplied by Officeworks.  There's even a couple of plastic serving trays, jugs for juice and carafes for water on tables to allow us to supply you all with a solid services at PD workshops.  Again, all thanks to the support of Officeworks.

This year you'll notice many of the same things again but there's also many "behind the scenes" items you would never be aware of.  Last year my husband bought himself something he's wanted for quite a while, a Laserjet printer.  The added bonus is that we are able to use it for the Network too, to print higher quality in-school posters and the like.  The toner cartriges for the printer aren't exactly cheap (even though printing individual pages is cheaper than for a bubblejet etc printer) and Officeworks have donated some of these in order to help us get more posters into schools to help local CRTs to be aware of what options are open to them through the Network.

This is far from an exhaustive list and we'd like to take this opportunity to thank Officeworks for supporting us in helping to improve the quality of education available to 1000's of regional students in Victoria through the education and support we can make available to local CRTs.  If you shop at Officeworks Wodonga we encourage you to take a minute or two and say thankyou as you pass a manager too ;).

Regards,

Mel.

Lesson Idea - Mail is mystifying to many children!

Have you ever given a thought to how your students communicate as opposed to how you used to communicate?  The digital age is taking over and "snail mail" can be an unknown quantity for children these days! Apart from a birthday card, a christmas card and perhaps a bank statement everty six months our students rarely recieve mail let alone send any!  They have no idea of how to address an envelope, how much a stamp costs and sometimes not even where their nearest mailbox is.

Learning about Mail is a marvellous way to introduce many concepts about the world around them and easy to relate to many curriculum areas.

Literacy is clear cut as it's reading, writing and composition.  It's also a way to explore systems (how does mail work?), transport (How many ways can mail travel?), geography (where does mail come from or go) among other things.

Occasionally, when I need an improptu lesson, mail is an easy and engaging place to take my students.

How does a letter "work"?

Well, for this we need an Envelope!

This video on Youtube

I've tried a number of ways and this simple envelope is easy enough for students to make themselves and is robust enough to deal with how a preppie folds a letter!  All you need is an A4 sheet of white paper, a pair of scissors and a glue stick!  No printing or photocopying required ;).

Why do we need an envelope?  

• This protects our letter from getting dirty and also from damage.  
• It keeps the contents of our letter private.
• It lets us write the address of where it's going without writing on our nice neat letter.

So, how do we make sure the postman knows where the letter is going?

Addressing guidelines:  Australia Post Website.

We write an address on the letter so the postman knows where it's going and we write a return address on the envelope in case it gets lost and needs to be returned to us.

What are the 4 coloured boxes for?

This is where the postcode goes.  Everyone living close together has the same postcode.  This is to make it easy for the letter to get to the right postman so he can sort and deliver the mail.

There are machines that can read this postcode if it is in the right place so they put boxes on the envelope to show us where to put it.  The machines sort most of the mail for the postman after he collects the mail so he can send it off to the right postcode so it gets to the right postman so he can sort and deliver the mail.

We pay for our email by paying for our internet, but how do we pay for our letters?

We pay for our mail by buying stamps.  When we put a stamp on our envelope the postman can see that we've paid him to deliver our mail.  This stamp has a place on our letter so the postman can find it easily.

What can you send?

Letters and pictures just like with email.  You can also send items by putting them in parcels and packages.

How does mail travel?

Does your postie deliver mail by walking, on a motorbike, in a car or in a van?  Mail can also travel on a train, in a truck on a boat or in a plane.

It all sounds very simple to us who grew up in an age where it was much more common but to today's children this can be a world of new wonders!  Some of your students will never have sent or recieved a letter of their own and it can be quite a foreign concept which you can capitalize on to capture their attention for a writing exercise or craft by making an envelope and designing their own stamp.

There's a awful lot of places you can go with a letter ;)

Regards,

Mel.

Killing two birds with one stone - Reading for engagement.

With the curriculum getting more and more packed each year, it gets harder and harder to prioritize what teachers can bring to their classroom.  Teachers are slowly but surely losing the ability to choose the elements of their Student's education as they have to "pack in" everything they are supposed to teach in an efficient way.  The "extras" are slowly going by the wayside and modern students are missing out on a lot of what we used to get in schools.

While Teachers scrabble to educate their students in a way that gets them reading, writing and composing? It's getting harder and harder to find the time to make it a priority to give them a passion for books and a love for reading for the simple enjoyment of it.  I get around this by killing two birds with one stone and using my favourite books to engage with my students as a basis for a lesson rather than using books purely as a teaching aid.

Reading to engage is a little different from reading to settle a class.  Reading to settle a class is about focusing their attention away from playground issues and giving their bodies time to stop giving out all the chemicals that make them jumpy and excited for example (although this isn't the only time when it's a good idea).  Reading to engage is a little different in that it is to grab their attention and get them personally invested in the subject matter to provide self-motivation for the following lesson.

Of course Engagement is a very important tool for CRTs as we need a solid way to overcome the fact that we are an "invader" into the classrooms we work in.  We are an immediate excuse for the students to once again start testing boundaries to see what they can get away with.  Keeping them engaged with their work is a very effective method to steer them away from testing those boundaries, they are so busy with something else that it just gives so little time for it to occur to them to try and step over one or two. This doesn't mean that this isn't also an excellent way to get instilling a love of literature back into regular classrooms!

While this is a support video for my one-book lesson plans (I will make a "non advertising" version of this video for the Wodonga CRT Support Network YouTube Channel as soon as time permits and replace the one that's here) it shows the key aspects of reading to engage as opposed to reading to settle a class.

Watch this video on YouTube!

The beautiful part about using books in this way is that they are used for "justifiable educational purposes" when it comes to what you have to prioritize when planning your lessons but it's also a step back in time to when it was also easy to make instilling a love of literacy and books in our students a priority too.

Regards,

Mel.

Lions, Tigers, Bears - Oh my!

Wow, what a whirlwind Term 2 has been!

One of the problems with working on so much in the way of the network (PD, monthly meetings, blog, Youtube, challenges and all of the background stuff that goes on) is that while it all runs smoothly when things go right, a spanner in the works can be a real crimp on how much time we can devote to anything!  Especially now that I'm the Coordinator for Shepparton too!

In term 2 between Wodonga, Wangaratta, and Shepparton we've put on no less than 11 PD workshops!

• The Singing Classroom in both Wangaratta and Shepparton.
• The National Curriculum, Thinking Skills and Personalised Learning in both Wodonga and Shepparton.
• Literacy Games in Wangaratta and Shepparton.
• Get'em Writing in Wangaratta and Shepparton.
• Creativity knows no boundaries in all 3 locations.
• Jo Hinchliffe in Wodonga.

and of course our 3 monthly meetings in Wodonga on top for a grand total 14 PD opportunities (48.5 hours Presenter based + 7.5 hrs collegial = 56 hours).

Whew!  That is almost as much as what we did in Wodonga last year in a single term!

Of course this isn't "normal" as we were playing a bit of a game of catch-up because of the down-time during the funding review.

As a result, the blog and YouTube "stuffs" have simply had to suffer.  In a perfect world everything would have continued on in full force but we all know life is a matter of priorities and sometimes you just have to pick the lesser of 2 evils.

Now that things are going to settle down we can once again pay attention to the Blog, YouTube AND getting the rest of the Resource Challenge stuff collated and uploaded.

All in all we still think it's been a wonderful term despite these drawbacks and we are sorry to those of you who rely on these resources we've had to ignore.  Rest assured we are working furiously to rejuvinate what's been a slow blog and look forward to it all getting back to normal.

Regards,

Mel.


 

New 40 Weeks 40 Classrooms! - What makes you unique as a CRT?

Sorry about the audio!  Not sure what's happening there because it doesn't sound like that before it's uploaded.  We'll be sure to have this fixed by the next video!