The wheels on the bus go round and round..

VIT CRT Networks are like a bus.  They are a wonderful vehicle for taking large groups of people to the places they want to go.  As Network coordinators we sit in the drivers seat and know some of the good places to take people to see the sights on offer.  

The question is, what use is any of that unless you have a bunch of people that want to go places?

Recently, while wandering through my duties as a Teacher and Network Coordinator, I had reason to revisit Dawn Colcott's paper, "The Professional Identity of Relief Teachers".

It opens with this;

"Teachers working in casual relief and emergency positions (CRTs) struggle to establish an identity within the profession. The nature of their work and professional isolation often means that they are marginalised by their colleagues and perceived to be a ‘lesser’ group of teachers. While this view of CRTs may have been justified in the past, CRTs deserve to be respected, as members of the profession because all teachers registered in Victoria are now required to meet and maintain professional standards."

This paper is from 2009, a few years ago now, so why does this strike me as worth commenting on now?

As a CRT I am frequently given feedback by the Teachers and Aides I replace or work alongside.  All too frequently many of us receive little feedback from schools directly other than the fact that they keep hiring us (VAGO report on CRT Arrangements, "Findings").  The other day I got some feedback as the Wodonga CRT Support Network coordinator;

An Assistant Prin brought up the fact that she has noticed the steady improvement in the quality of CRTs in the last 3 years. How they used to look at their lists of "possibles" at the beginning of the year and have to heavily prioritize which CRTs they could most rely on to actively teach. Often this led to only a handful of "high priority" choices. This year they had a much easier time choosing a lot more "high priority" (my term, not hers) CRTs they could access and are confident in hiring.

The activities of the Wodonga CRT Support Network were credited as one of the main driving forces behind this improvement and I was heartily encouraged to 'keep on doing what I'm doing'. This was a great piece of feedback for me to receive and made me as pleased as punch.  All my efforts were having a positive and measurable effect on the local school community.  Sometimes though, I wonder whether the credit for all this makes it as far as it should go.

The simple fact is that what I do is probably not even half of the story. That sounds odd to many people who know precisely what I do:- organize presenters for PD workshops, a venue for the meetings, catering for both, maintain a blog etc.  All that is, in the end, is providing an arena for things to happen in.

None of it works unless our members are genuinely interested in Learning.  Because of our membership "policies" there are a lot of CRTs taking advantage of the opportunities we provide to various levels.  

What we are noticing though is that there is a lesser and lesser focus on the PD hours required to maintain registration with each passing year. There is more and more focus on being good teachers.

Presenters and the Wodonga Network.

This is a short section and can be covered with one observation

We get presenters in from across the state to provide Professional Development for CRTs.  A common feedback comment is they really enjoyed themselves because the atmosphere is boosted because everyone seems to want to be there.  They counterpoint this with stories of other presentations where they have gone into a school to present and...

many of the participants just don't really want to be there.  They aren't disruptive, they dutifully learn what they are intended to learn.  They are quiet and reserved, more passive in their learning, and are the first to pack up and step out the door.

With our Network they notice something very different.  There are relatively few who are quiet and reserved though there are still those who head for the door.  The tables turn in a special way though.  The ones who head for the door aren't usually the ones who were quiet and reserved.  Apologies fly as they leave too!  The ones who were quiet and reserved hang back to discuss the workshop with the presenter, their colleagues or myself.

The presenters often comment on the difference in the atmosphere and the much higher level of the participant's general thirst for knowledge. 

They have felt left out in the cold for so long, lacking easily accessible avenues to the same types of PD opportunities as their full-time counterparts, but instead of being content to remain on the bottom rung they are eager to seize every opportunity to catch up with the rest of the Teaching community.

CRTs as a whole simply don't want to be "lesser" teachers.

As the driver of the bus you need those willing passengers to make it worth leaving the parking lot. 

While some are quick to congratulate me on my personal efforts with the Wodonga CRT Support Network and "what it has achieved", I think the role of local CRTs in this process is often given far less credit that it deserves. CRTs crave the knowledge required to be good at their jobs to the same extent as any other teacher.  While I think we can all agree that, in the past, there was a case to think of CRTs as "lesser" Teachers, the justifications behind this view are well and truly fading.

While the opportunities provided through VIT CRT Networks are sometimes hard work, none of that hard work will pay off unless there's CRTs out there actively wanting to engage in their professional growth as a Teacher.

If CRTs were, by and large, "lesser teachers" there would be no way we could have built the network up to the stage it's at.  It really is that simple. It is the desire of CRTs, their drive to learn, their desire to be good at what they do that makes it all work.

Our bus is going to a different destination but that doesn't mean it's a shorter journey!

"But they don't have to plan", "they don't work every day", "they don't have to write reports" I often hear from many.  Well, you know what?  They have to have a whole other set of other skills.  They don't have the luxury of taking a week to get to know their class and muddle through what works best for which student.  They have to walk into a class, figure out students inside of 10 minutes and know precisely what attitude to take towards which students and which behaviour management strategies are going to work.  Without being good at these things the students don't get the learning they deserve.

In that same 10 minutes they have to decipher a lesson plan, often understandable only to who wrote it, divine what they are supposed to be doing for the day, figure out exactly what the teacher intended them to get out of it and launch into productive teaching.  Planning may be work to full-timers but I assure you there's times you'd kill for the opportunity to have done the planning yourself.  How different are we when what full-time teachers consider work we consider a luxury?

All that in 10 Minutes is a skill permanently employed teachers just don't need.  While there's a lot of similarities between all teachers, there are things that are also different.

Being a CRT is "different" but that doesn't mean CRTs are "lesser".  The greater education community is slowly coming to understand that too.  VIT started CRT Networks because, although they consider CRTs "equals", they know they are different.  The DEECD created it's CRT Professional Learning Support Initiative because they now understand the role of CRTs in the Education System is crucial to it's operation and the expectations placed on them are higher than ever.

The people most in a position to continue this change in attitude and carry it through the entire education community are CRTs themselves.  If the CRTs of the Wodonga Network are anything to go by?

They are more than worthy of that task.

Well done each and every one of you, keep up the good work.  Even if you aren't getting the feedback directly, it's coming in and I can assure you that attitudes are changing and schools are noticing the difference!

Regards,

Mel.