The Followup on Relationships: Relief teachers and high quality practice.

To follow up on the last post: 

It is often not talked about that relief teachers are as reliant as they are on "Highly Accomplished" teaching practices from day one.  This reliance is partly because of the nature of our role in Education and partly because we lack a hierarchical structure as a workforce or are sort of the 'hidden' or 'forgotten' workforce.

As an example let's talk Australian Professional Standard 1.1 at the "Highly Accomplished" level.

1.1 Physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students - Highly Accomplished:

"Select from a flexible and effective repertoire of teaching strategies to suit the physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students".

Doesn't that just sound like an ordinary day for us?  To drift from classroom to classroom on varying days and ally ourselves with sometimes what is a new group of students to meet their learning needs, engage them and teach them effectively 'on the fly'?  I personally find it quite interesting that the very first highly accomplished standard is just "what we do every day". 

So when looking at the highly accomplished standards did you say to yourself at any point "hey, that's what I do!"?   If not, go back and have another look:

Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.

When a Relief Teacher needs information about relief teaching it often means talking to another relief teacher for various reasons.  Not only are the most relevant people to talk about relief teaching with, most states in Australia don't actually support collegial best-practice approaches for relief teachers and staff-room culture can be a significant barrier as well (especially in our early years as a relief teacher).  When it comes to the standards about professional engagement (standards 6 and 7) this kind of means we are quite often  'on our own' as a workforce.  I consider myself to be very lucky to be working in one of the ones that does support relief teachers in this fashion, has been doing it for perhaps the longest and to be one of the ones providing that support.

While my position is 'official' as a CRT Network Coordinator in Victoria, the fantastic part is that we actually just roll up our sleeves and do the job when these sorts of supports aren't there anyway.  Relief teacher blogs and Facebook pages are everywhere.  Offering advice, sharing resources, providing critical evaluations on PD we can access.  That's 'highly accomplished' level stuff.

So when I say "Relief Teachers are Real Teachers" I really really really mean it.

Regards,

Mel.