As people who know me are aware, I like to bring not just knowledge but also understanding to the people I talk to about these kinds of thing. For months now I have been struggling with this because the AITSL website is often very formal and uses a very specific type of language. For people who already understand the issue that is great, they are already engaged with the content, but people who do not yet understand? Generating that understanding requires a different strategy. So something I have been struggling with is how to create a "lightbulb moment" that offers a basic understanding of the broad issues so I don't have to resort to technical documentation all the time.
Transferring the understanding of induction.
I have made a very personal connection with the below video for a lot of reasons so it's time for a bit of a personal story. I feel quite strongly about CRTs getting positive inductions into the profession. When I was originally asked by Classcover's Relief Teacher Association to create an "Introduction to Relief Teaching" online course for graduates, I was originally supposed to make it a 1.5 hour course. Well... I started work on the course and started writing down and sequencing topics and it just kept getting longer and longer and longer. There is SO much that relief teachers aren't told or supported to understand as they enter the profession and I was having a real problem removing some parts that I felt really should be there in order to hit that 1.5 hour deadline.
I had to start making hard choices and making up all of these little internal rules on what was going in and what wasn't; it was still a very difficult task to keep my 'wants' in check to make sure the course was what it needed to be as well as what I was asked to produce.
Eventually I had to talk with the RTA staff about how I felt that 1.5 hours just wasn't enough to provide anything of substance. To do the right job. In contacting them I had genuine issues in supporting them to understand why I felt this was so important and so necessary. I knew what I was saying was true, I understood why it was true, I just had a lot of difficulty communicating that understanding. To their credit the RTA took a leap of faith anyway and the result is a 3.5 hour course, over twice as long as initially intended, that's receiving very positive feedback. And then they made it absolutely free to all Relief Teachers (which is something I personally feel is an absolutely incredible thing for them to do) and ended up paying me extra for it too. In the end I don't think it's a 'perfect course' but I think it's good one and, thankfully, the participants are agreeing with me.
For the months following that course I have still been stuck on that issue of not being able to promote the same kind of understandings on inductions in others that I have in a short but relevant way. To get them to understand exactly why I felt that course was so important and why I think that the RTA putting it out there for free was was such a ridiculously positive thing to do; it's actually an astounding act of support for CRTs in Australia when they initially envisaged this as one of their core earners.
Still... My main form of trying to promote the understanding of induction for CRTs has remained embedded in the AITSL website and the videos, articles and research it provides.
My 'Lightbulb Moment'.
Until yesterday that was my conundrum anyway, then I found this:
THAT is what teacher induction is like. It's not "the same" but that's what it's like.
Our induction into schools and the profession instills beliefs and habits into us that we incorporate into our professional identity; how we identify within ourselves as teachers that influences our practices and ethics that we use every day. They can be positive, they can be neutral and they can be negative. What we are supported to do and to understand during our inductions becomes part of the "automatic teacher" in us, like riding a bike. Whether our induction is one we perceive as positive and enjoyable or negative and frustrating can make a startling difference on how we perceive our profession, the value we place on ourselves within it, how we relate to and interact with our colleagues and whether or not we become the victim of teacher attrition. It creates a bias on how we view and practice teaching and being a Teacher.
Once something is incorporated within our professional identity? It can be very very hard to undo and we can be stuck with unsupportive and ineffective biases for our entire careers. It effects our long term growth as teachers, it effects the satisfaction we feel within our profession and it effects our student's outcomes through those things.
Poor inductions simply don't support us to reach our potential as teachers and in some cases reduces the upper limits of our potential without some very hard work undoing something.
So why do I feel so strongly about this one and what are the practicalities here? Well, like is also shown in the video, once we make the effort to move to those biases that support us to become better teachers it's very hard to go back again; to learn to once again to 'ride a bike like I did as a kid'. We can make the choice to become better at what we do and once we are? It's not easy to fall back on old habits. It helps understand that moving forward is 100% possible and the struggles are certainly worth the effort.
The mechanics of CRTs and inductions.
Two well known facts about the CRT context are that entering the profession as a CRT is very "sink or swim" and that CRTs are often 'responsible' for sourcing their own professional development. When you put these two facts together the logical outcome is that CRTs are also often responsible for "sourcing their own induction". That's kind of crazy when you think about it, a novice teacher that's not supported to aim for the stars or even to understand how to do that effectively.
While as teachers we are bombarded with the ethical and procedural implications of professional development, no-one is bombarding CRTs with information about induction so they can seek out a positive and proactive one. They are being required to do something that, frequently, no-one is supporting them to understand and is vitally important to their career and self-image. Or even how to recognise the difference between what is good for their induction and what is not.
I have had the opportunity to talk to many CRTs about their idea of induction and often it extends only to the information they are given in a new school. What the school's ethics are, what any specific policies are, the school map, bell times and so on. They often don't understand that classroom teachers receive a far more unified induction strategy where induction into the school and induction into the profession are handled simultaneously. This often prevents them from understanding how induction is split into two streams for CRTs.
Induction into schools is often well handled but unfortunately CRT alienation, staffroom culture and debates about exactly who's responsibility it is to induct CRTs into the profession often present distinct barriers in CRTs accessing a positive and proactive induction in both streams.
How I tackle these mechanics.
This is something I want to do something about and now that I can adequately pass on the basics of inductions, perhaps I can now begin to also transfer understanding as to why I say some of the things I do.
"CRTs are specialist teachers" and "Relief Teachers are Real Teachers" are not simply motivational catchphrases. These are important understandings for CRTs to be instilled with in order to engage more fully with their chosen profession and combat the issues that isolation sets before them.
"Every day is a job interview" is not just an expression of understanding how to climb the ladder of CRT priority lists. It is also to encourage CRTs to do the best job they can every day so they have more opportunity to see "lightbulb moments" in their students and gain a deeper respect for themselves as a professional and for their role in education. This helps CRTs engage more with their profession which also overcomes isolation issues.
"Always teach something" is by no means advice I developed on my own, it's perhaps the best advice I ever received as a novice CRT, but I repeat it regularly. It's an important piece of advice for keeping students engaged and through that heads challenging behaviours off at the path so is great for the practicalities of being a CRT. But like "every day is a job interview" is also provides a clear path to generating results in students that show us that we often do make a measurable difference to a student's education in a single day.
My/the RTA's "Intro to Relief" course promotes active and positive relationships with schools, other staff and students because those relationships are critical to CRTs sourcing their own positive induction into the profession. The 3.5 hour length of the course is certainly longer than the original 1.5 hours but it is still only long enough to begin laying the groundwork and pass on a few important tools and strategies that CRTs need to source their own induction. It's not "enough", but it's a beginning that puts people on the right path to address what separates CRTs from their profession build the relationships they need.
This is why I disagree so heavily with the idea that "80% of relief teaching is behaviour management". It suggests that all we are is "classroom replacements" when nothing could be further from the truth. We are fully fledged professionals and like any other teacher our role in education involves both in-classroom and out-of-the-classroom aspects just like any other. While we are CRTs today many of us will be the classroom teachers of tomorrow so the persistent nature of induction makes a difference, what we are doing today isn't the only thing that matters. We need these understandings to meet our potential as teachers. Our students both now and in the future need us to have this understanding.
Our induction into the profession as CRTs often doesn't reflect these truths and this is why the induction of casual and relief teachers is, in my opinion, such a momentously important part of AITSL's ITE reform.
So I am, and forever will be, grateful to Destin Sandlin of SmarterEveryDay for finally allowing me to have a launching point to begin to explain why I do the things I do as a CRT Network Coordinator, the results I am trying to achieve and why I try to bring some of that to the greater CRT community in Australia.
In a few days time I will be bringing us another important lesson from Destin from another video.
What do you think it will be?
See you in a few day's time!
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