I began posting a few of the things the DET sent through a while ago as time permitted around my holiday adventures to the tune of thanks from many people who read them. I'd like to take a minute or two to discuss what's going on at the moment.
Recently a few things have been triggered which has resulted in the DET giving a higher focus to CRTs in Vic as a "part of their workforce". This began back in 2010 with the CRT Professional Learning Support Initiative which hit a few speed-bumps and spent almost 2 years in a state of limbo for various reasons. The return of the CRT PLSI (now just the CRT PLI) is only part of the things that are going on behind the scenes. In our recent interactions with the DET they have come to the table prepared. It seems like a good portion of the time that when we say "how about doing this" the new team has already given it thought. Thoughts, of course, take time to implement into the real world.
When it comes to the PD they have collated, as above, we coordinators asked and it was already on their minds. It wasn't collated yet but it was certsinly on the "to do" list. In some ways we coordinators are just providing support to create an order of priority for their already existing "to do" list. To pass on one of their recent contributions we have created a new "DET PD" page rather than do our usual thing of placing it in the side bar.
With this one the thanks belongs with the team at the DET, we coordinators are simply the messengers.
The new page can be found here:
http://wodongacrtsupportnetwork.blogspot.com.au/p/det.html
or by using the tabs for pages above!
Regards,
Mel.
Sunday, December 27, 2015
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
CRTs and flexibility - some new terminology to think about for an old favourite.
At the start of 2015 I presented at the AEU's CRT Kickstarter conference in Melbourne and I primarily discussed CRTs as "real teachers" and the importance of believing you are one. Today I thought I'd take time out to revisit this one for the grads exiting uni and finding themselves being a CRT when it's not by choice.
It has long been understood that flexibility is an important attribute of highly effective CRTs. This includes the stuff from the "this is how you work" side of things as well as the "this is how you teach" side of things too. Work issues are things like the ability to drift from school to school and quickly adapt to and build relationships in new classrooms. The teach side of things is the classroom context and gets discussed in terms such as "thinking on your feet"; this is sometimes described in research not only as flexibility but also as the attribute of adaptability as well as skills such as lateral thinking,
These things are creeping more and more into the classroom teacher's role in education as education changes and the needs of students evolve along with it.
Ideally what a CRT does is practice "adaptive expertise" and all desirable CRTs do; even if they don't know to call it that.
We enter a new classroom, scan the walls, come to grips with any lessons plans left for us and then adapt our practice to suit what we can divine about how the teacher we replace teaches. These are our routine expertises we use to foster adaptive expertise to meet the challenges in this new room or with this new class. We can learn from the room, the notes and the lesson plans by considering them all forms of communication. This helps us to provide a continuity of education not only for the lessons our students are supposed to be receiving but also in general classroom stability. We preserve routines and school ethics while using a teaching style our students can relate to. We are adapting our expertise to suit a new and challenging situation on quite a frequent basis.
As we become established and gain the trust of schools and teachers they begin to offer us an increasing amount of support to help us adapt ourselves to new situations and the rapidly changing needs of students. We gain information to meet these new challenges head on and overcome them with an ease that is often surprising to other teachers.
While the context will be different in a classroom position, how you apply the skills you have learnt, the core skills remain the same.
Through this we can begin to understand why treating CRT work as a "consolation prize" or a holding pattern until we get a classroom position can be somewhat of a mistake. This new term, adaptive expertise, shows us how our practice as a CRT is going to fit into a classroom of our own. It offers us a new framework to discuss our CRT experience as relevant in any classroom we will teach in during our careers, strengthening our CVs, applications and interviews.
So, what's really in it for us to take all of this on board?
No matter how we think, this is how schools think. In spite of a lot of CRTs being out there, "high performing CRTs" are actively fought over. These are the CRTs who have understood that being good at delivering a lesson in a classroom is not enough, they have met all of the specific challenges of being a CRT with relish rather than accepting that their preconceptions are the way things have to be. They have adapted their ideals and practice to be "great CRTs" rather than "great in the classroom".
It is important to view your time as a CRT as a "career stage" rather than as "a temp job". It is often underestimated as to the effect this difference in perspective can have on your future as a teacher. When your time is thought of in this way it allows you to better come to grips with how your time as a CRT is giving you the necessary skills you need even if it is your intention to move on to a "classroom of your own".
Being a CRT is an excellent training ground that will serve you well in your future career and how not being professionally aware of your full role in education (and how to excel in it) is a missed opportunity.
Take the plunge and strive to excel as a CRT, it will be a very valuable journey to have under your belt in both the short and long term.
Regards,
Mel.
It has long been understood that flexibility is an important attribute of highly effective CRTs. This includes the stuff from the "this is how you work" side of things as well as the "this is how you teach" side of things too. Work issues are things like the ability to drift from school to school and quickly adapt to and build relationships in new classrooms. The teach side of things is the classroom context and gets discussed in terms such as "thinking on your feet"; this is sometimes described in research not only as flexibility but also as the attribute of adaptability as well as skills such as lateral thinking,
These things are creeping more and more into the classroom teacher's role in education as education changes and the needs of students evolve along with it.
Ideally what a CRT does is practice "adaptive expertise" and all desirable CRTs do; even if they don't know to call it that.
"Routine experts know all of the routines of a discipline, profession, game, or whatever, and, in fact, they may know them so well that they might even be considered world class in their expertise. As John Bransford has written "Routine experts have learned a set of routines that can be very complex and sophisticated, and [they] become very skilled at applying them." They may be life-long learners, but, as Bransford points out, they simply become more "efficient at doing what they have always been doing, and perhaps of adding a few new tricks along the way."
Adaptive Experts, in contrast, also know all of the routines, but they also have the attitude and aptitude to recognize and even relish both the opportunity and necessity for invention. They enjoy exploring the unknown and thinking in different kinds of ways. They appreciate their own knowledge, but they also realize how little they know in comparison to all there is to know. They constantly question their own assumptions, and feel comfortable doing so, and they avoid strong emotional attachments to any set of beliefs".
http://www.bestteachersinstitute.org/id80.html
We enter a new classroom, scan the walls, come to grips with any lessons plans left for us and then adapt our practice to suit what we can divine about how the teacher we replace teaches. These are our routine expertises we use to foster adaptive expertise to meet the challenges in this new room or with this new class. We can learn from the room, the notes and the lesson plans by considering them all forms of communication. This helps us to provide a continuity of education not only for the lessons our students are supposed to be receiving but also in general classroom stability. We preserve routines and school ethics while using a teaching style our students can relate to. We are adapting our expertise to suit a new and challenging situation on quite a frequent basis.
As we become established and gain the trust of schools and teachers they begin to offer us an increasing amount of support to help us adapt ourselves to new situations and the rapidly changing needs of students. We gain information to meet these new challenges head on and overcome them with an ease that is often surprising to other teachers.
While the context will be different in a classroom position, how you apply the skills you have learnt, the core skills remain the same.
Through this we can begin to understand why treating CRT work as a "consolation prize" or a holding pattern until we get a classroom position can be somewhat of a mistake. This new term, adaptive expertise, shows us how our practice as a CRT is going to fit into a classroom of our own. It offers us a new framework to discuss our CRT experience as relevant in any classroom we will teach in during our careers, strengthening our CVs, applications and interviews.
So, what's really in it for us to take all of this on board?
"Many audited schools said that highly skilled and experienced CRTs do not stay as CRTs for long. High performers are often given fixed-term contracts and quickly become permanently employed. This makes it all the more important that DEECD acts to better understand and improve the skills of the remaining CRT workforce.Better performing CRTs are also likely to be on multiple lists held by government and non-government schools. As a result, schools in the same locality are competing against each other for high performing CRTs who can ‘cherry pick’ preferred schools and/or positions. This can make it more difficult for some schools to attract suitably skilled and experienced CRTs."
VAGO Report on CRT Arrangements - 2.3.2 - Page 8.
No matter how we think, this is how schools think. In spite of a lot of CRTs being out there, "high performing CRTs" are actively fought over. These are the CRTs who have understood that being good at delivering a lesson in a classroom is not enough, they have met all of the specific challenges of being a CRT with relish rather than accepting that their preconceptions are the way things have to be. They have adapted their ideals and practice to be "great CRTs" rather than "great in the classroom".
It is important to view your time as a CRT as a "career stage" rather than as "a temp job". It is often underestimated as to the effect this difference in perspective can have on your future as a teacher. When your time is thought of in this way it allows you to better come to grips with how your time as a CRT is giving you the necessary skills you need even if it is your intention to move on to a "classroom of your own".
Being a CRT is an excellent training ground that will serve you well in your future career and how not being professionally aware of your full role in education (and how to excel in it) is a missed opportunity.
Take the plunge and strive to excel as a CRT, it will be a very valuable journey to have under your belt in both the short and long term.
Regards,
Mel.
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Driving professional discussion for CRTs.
A lot is happening of late that is looking to change the way students are educated in Australia resulting in some interesting information coming out to have a look at. It's also giving me a bit of a vehicle to talk about how the Wodonga CRT Network operates and how focused it is on delivering what CRTs need not only today but to support them in their future careers no matter where it may take them.
The Wodonga CRT Support Network holds 11 collegial meetings a year so the ability to drive effective professional conversations is a central component of doing what we do in an effective way.
One thing CRTs sometimes have trouble accessing is long-term relationships with trusted colleagues built on mutual support. This is why "reliability" is often discussed in relation to effective collegial groups. Can constant contact be relied upon? Can the group be relied upon to support instead of judge? Can the group be relied on as a source of accurate, relevant and valuable knowledge? As CRTs often drift in and out of schools and classrooms, a stable and reliable collegial network can be very hard to find or establish.
For classroom teachers, when they get a job they are brought into an established and functioning collegial environment automatically. It is there from day one to engage with and learn from. CRTs are often very different as they aren't "inserted" into schools in the same way simply because of the different way they are utilised by schools. There is a benefit in having access to a wide variety of collegial groups in different schools but at the same time they can be less relevant to the way they work that can prevent any great degree of depth.
The staffroom culture of CRTs as "lesser teachers" can also be an issue. CRTs tend to have to "prove themselves" before being accepted into these groups making the initial time in a school, or entering the career as a CRT, an unsupportive one.
CRT Networks that run collegial meetings help to target these kinds of issues by being the "reliable" collegial group that all teachers need access to in order to excel.
As mentioned, resources can be an important component which is one of the reasons we choose sharing resources so frequently. Beyond our bag of tricks they focus the conversation and draw out the expertise of those in the room to benefit the group. Discussing the implementation, why and how it is engaging, what skills it uses, what classes/grades it is suitable for and so on promotes the transfer of important knowledge and skills.
One of our main discussion drivers is the sharing of resources with a specific focus. That might be games, engagement, maths, hands-on or (like this month's meeting) end of year activities. Of course as CRTs this gives us a whole host of top-class 'stuff' for our bag of tricks that comes from a trusted source but as described in this video, driving discussions is often about focus and solving problems of practice. As each teacher discusses their implementations, group members can ask questions or add one of their own personal strategies that might work well with that resource.
Through this sharing of resources, content knowledge and pedagogy is shared which is what makes our Meetings valuable in terms of the kinds of things the above video is mentioning.
The issue of "the agency to make a difference" is also a big one for CRTs, often more so than for any other kind of teacher. CRTs often feel isolated from the profession in that they don't feel that they are making a difference as their short contact with students just doesn't seem like enough to "make a difference". Universities largely train teachers around the concept in a very "classroom teacher" orientated way which often doesn't give the valuable insights into this that CRTs need. This can also result in CRTs struggling to recognise how their practice fits in with the teaching standards.
This means that CRTs often just don't feel like true professionals, like "real teachers", which is one of the reasons I make such a big deal of these two concepts in online forums. They have a framework that tells them what all good teachers do, "use these standards to make a difference to students" and if they can't see how what they do fits in with that this can have a very damaging effect on their professional identity that can take years to overcome and effect their entire teaching careers.
By helping each other to put our practice into the framework of the National Professional Standards for Teachers and relate our own role in the profession to student outcomes, it enables CRTs to better connect with their own careers. Through this it becomes possible to understand how we can be agents of change even in a single day and supports access to the strategies that make this possible. This is a very important aspect of what we do, especially for Graduates in our Network group, that helps them not only to consider themselves professionals but to use these understandings in a way that benefits their careers.
The sharing of resources using the format we do helps ensure that the collective capacity of the group is accessed in a way that provides new knowledge or a new perspective on 'old' knowledge to reflect upon. We take measures to support an active learning culture that is relevant to and effective in the CRT context and through that to help CRTs understand the importance of their role in education and to find meaning that can often be missed in the "day to day" view of how we teach.
Sometimes from the outside it is not immediately apparent that as a Coordinator I think as deeply about the meetings and PD workshops as I do or that Networks themselves are as important to education as they are. Because of that it's also often not immediately apparent what CRT Networks can do for CRTs beyond "supply professional development hours" to support their career.There is a great deal of potential in CRT Networks whether they are official like the VIT CRT Networks or one of the many informal groups popping up all over Australia. I personally hope these networks become system instituted, country wide, to maximise our effect on our students and our ability to be proud of our role within the Teaching profession.
We deserve it and our students need it to happen.
Regards,
Mel.
The Wodonga CRT Support Network holds 11 collegial meetings a year so the ability to drive effective professional conversations is a central component of doing what we do in an effective way.
One thing CRTs sometimes have trouble accessing is long-term relationships with trusted colleagues built on mutual support. This is why "reliability" is often discussed in relation to effective collegial groups. Can constant contact be relied upon? Can the group be relied upon to support instead of judge? Can the group be relied on as a source of accurate, relevant and valuable knowledge? As CRTs often drift in and out of schools and classrooms, a stable and reliable collegial network can be very hard to find or establish.
For classroom teachers, when they get a job they are brought into an established and functioning collegial environment automatically. It is there from day one to engage with and learn from. CRTs are often very different as they aren't "inserted" into schools in the same way simply because of the different way they are utilised by schools. There is a benefit in having access to a wide variety of collegial groups in different schools but at the same time they can be less relevant to the way they work that can prevent any great degree of depth.
The staffroom culture of CRTs as "lesser teachers" can also be an issue. CRTs tend to have to "prove themselves" before being accepted into these groups making the initial time in a school, or entering the career as a CRT, an unsupportive one.
CRT Networks that run collegial meetings help to target these kinds of issues by being the "reliable" collegial group that all teachers need access to in order to excel.
As mentioned, resources can be an important component which is one of the reasons we choose sharing resources so frequently. Beyond our bag of tricks they focus the conversation and draw out the expertise of those in the room to benefit the group. Discussing the implementation, why and how it is engaging, what skills it uses, what classes/grades it is suitable for and so on promotes the transfer of important knowledge and skills.
One of our main discussion drivers is the sharing of resources with a specific focus. That might be games, engagement, maths, hands-on or (like this month's meeting) end of year activities. Of course as CRTs this gives us a whole host of top-class 'stuff' for our bag of tricks that comes from a trusted source but as described in this video, driving discussions is often about focus and solving problems of practice. As each teacher discusses their implementations, group members can ask questions or add one of their own personal strategies that might work well with that resource.
Through this sharing of resources, content knowledge and pedagogy is shared which is what makes our Meetings valuable in terms of the kinds of things the above video is mentioning.
The issue of "the agency to make a difference" is also a big one for CRTs, often more so than for any other kind of teacher. CRTs often feel isolated from the profession in that they don't feel that they are making a difference as their short contact with students just doesn't seem like enough to "make a difference". Universities largely train teachers around the concept in a very "classroom teacher" orientated way which often doesn't give the valuable insights into this that CRTs need. This can also result in CRTs struggling to recognise how their practice fits in with the teaching standards.
This means that CRTs often just don't feel like true professionals, like "real teachers", which is one of the reasons I make such a big deal of these two concepts in online forums. They have a framework that tells them what all good teachers do, "use these standards to make a difference to students" and if they can't see how what they do fits in with that this can have a very damaging effect on their professional identity that can take years to overcome and effect their entire teaching careers.
By helping each other to put our practice into the framework of the National Professional Standards for Teachers and relate our own role in the profession to student outcomes, it enables CRTs to better connect with their own careers. Through this it becomes possible to understand how we can be agents of change even in a single day and supports access to the strategies that make this possible. This is a very important aspect of what we do, especially for Graduates in our Network group, that helps them not only to consider themselves professionals but to use these understandings in a way that benefits their careers.
The sharing of resources using the format we do helps ensure that the collective capacity of the group is accessed in a way that provides new knowledge or a new perspective on 'old' knowledge to reflect upon. We take measures to support an active learning culture that is relevant to and effective in the CRT context and through that to help CRTs understand the importance of their role in education and to find meaning that can often be missed in the "day to day" view of how we teach.
Sometimes from the outside it is not immediately apparent that as a Coordinator I think as deeply about the meetings and PD workshops as I do or that Networks themselves are as important to education as they are. Because of that it's also often not immediately apparent what CRT Networks can do for CRTs beyond "supply professional development hours" to support their career.There is a great deal of potential in CRT Networks whether they are official like the VIT CRT Networks or one of the many informal groups popping up all over Australia. I personally hope these networks become system instituted, country wide, to maximise our effect on our students and our ability to be proud of our role within the Teaching profession.
We deserve it and our students need it to happen.
Regards,
Mel.
Change to the Network email address.
Hello everyone,
We are going to be making a change to the public email address for the Wodonga CRT Support Network. Unfortunately many people are experiencing issues with the email address from VIT with emails not going through.
At the moment this is SHORT TERM only until we sort out the issues.
For the time being please use wodongacrt@gmail.com for INITIAL CONTACT.
If you are already getting communications from the Wodonga Network this will result in no changes for you. Everything remains exactly the same as it is now.
Regards,
Mel.
We are going to be making a change to the public email address for the Wodonga CRT Support Network. Unfortunately many people are experiencing issues with the email address from VIT with emails not going through.
At the moment this is SHORT TERM only until we sort out the issues.
For the time being please use wodongacrt@gmail.com for INITIAL CONTACT.
If you are already getting communications from the Wodonga Network this will result in no changes for you. Everything remains exactly the same as it is now.
Regards,
Mel.
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