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.
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