Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Merry Christmas!

It's 1am on Christmas morning, we're all rather happy and even though a good night's sleep is starting to look inviting?  It seems like a perfect time to say....


Whether you are home, away or abroad?  Regardless of which holiday you are celebrating?  We wish you and your families the safest, most enjoyable of holidays and look forward to seeing you all next year!

Regards,

Mel, Paul and family.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

PD structucture for the future part 2: Attandence numbers.

Keeping numbers low.

Some networks offer fewer PD workshops seating 60 or more while we keep our maximum numbers to 40.  We operate differently to these networks for certain reasons.

One of the main reasons is that as a smaller network in the beginning, we did not need large attendance numbers.  Any opportunity we offered rarely filled and the attendance cap of 40 was more about working out maximum costs than anything else.  Our early attendances were about 24-32 and the upper limit of 40 was completely theoretical.  As the Network has grown, and now that PD requirements are assessed yearly, attendance numbers have grown to the point where we are reaching the cap in bookings.  A couple no-shows generally makes attendance for full-time PD at 36-38.

Within the last 6 months our membership numbers are beginning to grow exponentially and we see a point not too long in the future where 40 will "not be enough".  We have, however, chosen to remain at an attendance cap of 40. This is not without reason.

The CRT Community.

Firstly, the Network is founded on the principle of creating community.  For too long many CRTs have felt like outsiders without any group to really belong to.  This leads to many frustrations, the stress of which has a negative impact on the quality of their teaching.  By giving CRTs somewhere to belong and ample opportunities to mingle in a social way, the smaller numbers we offer are helping many CRTs to bridge the gaps that are causing them to feel isolated.

With the general rise in morale, the quality of teaching on offer increases.  This helps our members to pull ahead of the pack when it comes to the CRT priority list for schools and who gets work how often.  This is of great importance to us.  To increase our numbers at PD workshops will begin to erode the social nature of our overall operations.

Variety of PD opportunities,

Secondly, we also believe that PD shouldn't just be about hours to maintain your registration.  While there is no dodging those 20 hours, by offering a larger variety of smaller opportunities we are able to cover a much wider range of topics and presenters.  This helps to ensure that not only can everyone get a good slice of their 20 hours, they can also pick and choose the opportunities that most interest them or provide them with the highest benefit to their career.

Not only does this help enable access to personally relevant opportunities, it also helps ensure that the day seems a lot less like "work".  Again, this folds back into the first point;  if you are happy you'll perform better and that's important to us.

Should we begin to raise attendance numbers, we will start to get closer to our goals as stated in the previous post and lose out in variety of presenter and topics.  It will become much harder to "tack on" the additional opportunities which allow us to cover such a broad array.

Expansion outside of Wodonga.

Lastly, these "added" workshops are what have allowed us to expand outside of Wodonga into Wangaratta and are what will also allow us to expand into more rural areas to help alleviate travel issues some CRTs are experiencing.

The funding we receive through the DEECD is intended to support all CRTs within a given area and  logistically speaking the ongoing nature of this funding is reliant on it achieving it's goals.  The 2011 release of the VAGO report on CRT Arrangements made specific mention that not all CRTs were able to benefit from the funding, often due to location issues leaving pockets of CRTs unable to access the benefits on offer.  We have begun to address this issue via the expansion into Wangaratta which has been the "test case" for our expansion onto other areas.

There are also ethical concerns to address.  Centralized offerings creates a situation where some are spending far more time traveling than others on a very regular basis.  This not only equates to travel expenses but also more time away from family and so on.  While this situation can never be made "completely fair", there is certainly leeway to share the load a little.

Summary.

In our view, increasing numbers has a cost-per-head benefit but that is simply outweighed by other concerns such as community, variety, fairness and even the continuance of the support funding we access.  Numbers of 40 for full-day and 20 for 2.5 hour presenter-based PD seem to be the "magic numbers" for a well rounded and equitable approach to providing PD for CRTs in our area.

Regards,

Melinda Lichnovsky-Klock
Wodonga CRT Support Network Coordinator.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Our end of year activity report is up!

As per usual for this time of year, our end of year activity report is now available.

http://wodongacrtsupportnetworkpd.blogspot.com.au/p/end-of-year-report-2013.html

Regards,

Mel.

Some things have been on hold!

Due to the work that's been needed behind the scenes, some things have fallen by the wayside.

These include:
  • Editorial blog posts
  • YouTube videos
  • The CRT Handbook
  • Resource production from the CRT Resource Challenge
  • A presence on Scootle.
etc.

Unfortunately these have been necessary evils in the past few months and for that we apologise.

Now that we have a lot of the background tasks sorted, rest assured these things will again be worked on with zest!

Regards,

Mel.

PD structucture for the future part 1: Yearly goals for the supply of PD.

Hello everyone!


In a "behind the scenes" way the changes to the DEECD's CRT Professional Learning Support Initiative have been soaking up a lot of our free time.  The funding we receive from the DEECD to provide PD for CRTs in our area forms one of the 3 major pillars of how we operate and it is important that we get it all right and make it work smoothly or others suffer as well!  Unlike last time we were in need of a serious restructure, we chose to continue many operations in the meantime and were much more selective about what we put on hold.

This means a few areas got quiet but allowed us to continue to be beneficial in the local CRT community.  We are now ready to be announcing the results with some solidity!

Important goals for the supply of PD:

We are pleased to say that we have not had to change any of our major yearly goals.  This is to supply:
  • 11 network meetings of 2.5 hours each (total 27.5 hours).
  • 3 full-day, 6.5 hour PD workshops (total 19.5 hours)
  • 2 evening 2.5 hour PD workshops (total 5 hours).
This keeps us above our desired goal of a total of 50 hours of PD per year (total 52 hours).  This goal of 50 hours has some major ideals behind it and we are supremely happy that it doesn't have to change.

These goals were set so that CRTs could:
  • Attend one third of the opportunities we offer and receive a total of their full 20 hours required for registration.
  • Attend presenter-based opportunities only and receive their total 20 hours of PD required for registration.
  • Attend Collegial opportunities only and receive their total of 20 hours of PD required for registration.
  • Maintain a "modular" approach that also allowed CRTs to "mix and match" the collegial and presenter-based for their total of 20 hours of the required PD for registration.
  • Provide a number of opportunities that allows CRTs to exceed the required 20 hours of PD to maintain registration at minimal out-of-pocket costs.

Please note that these are reliably achievable minimums.   The framework also had to realistically reflect budgetary concerns as well as offer avenues to the expansion of the opportunities on offer provided the budget allowed for these expansions.

Some of the reasons behind these decisions will be explained in more detail in an upcoming blog post.

Regards,

Mel.