Reflecting on the practicing teacher criteria 2021

To have spent so many months working from home in a job that usually involves so much face to face time, has made 2021 feel like a bit of an odd year for msot Auckland based teachers. So many of my usual patterns and routines as a teacher was disturbed, and so many plans were disrupted. And while supporting student learning from home is certainly not the norm, it doesn't change the professional responsibilities we hold. In fact, as I reflected on the practicing teacher criteria for 2021, I was reminded once again of just how flexible we need to be if we are to support our learners effectively in such uncertain, and somewhat volatile times. 

What follows is a brief reflection about how I attempted to address the practising teacher criteria in 2021. I have included some examples of my practice, as well as a brief reflection on some of my next steps for 2022. 

1 Te Tiriti o Waitangi partnership: Demonstrate commitment to tangata whenuatanga and Te Tiriti o Waitangi partnership in Aotearoa New Zealand.

• Creating a te reo Māori Kahoot or Quizziz for each topic that I taught to help students learn important vocabulary in both English in Māori. 
• Ensuring te reo Māori terms are always used for common headings alongside English. Eg. learning objective/whāinga paetae, success criteria/ngā paeru angitū.
• Introducing myself to every class with my own pepepha.
• Having students share their own pepeha, and then linking examples and contexts in the learning to student pepehas. Eg. students had to interview someone older than them about how an environment they are linked to has changed over time. 

Where to next:

While I have learnt to incorporate a more and more te reo Māori in a range of ways throughout my practice, I am still limited in using this when speaking. Hence in 2022, I intend to use find more opportunities for incorporating te reo Māori in speaking opportunities.  

2 Professional learning: Use inquiry, collaborative problem solving and professional learning to improve professional capability to impact on the learning and achievement of all learners.

• Across school lead inquiry into our leadership of the WSL teams. 
• Working with Laurayne Tafa re. improving our impact coaching.
• Professional reading to support the development of our kāhui ako rubrics; learner agency rubric & collective teacher efficacy rubric.
• Researching and synthesising best practice to support learning in lockdown. 

Where to next:

In 2022, I hope to keep developing my knowledge of tikanga and Mātauranga Māori, particularly in science. I am also looking forward to working with Laurayne Tafa to continue developing as an impact coach. 

3 Professional relationships: Establish and maintain professional relationships and behaviours focused on the learning and wellbeing of each learner.

• Continuing to develop Impact Coaching practice using our kāhui ako coaching model. 

• Using a range of communication methods to suit learners, both on-site and offsite eg. 
• Daily Google meets with hub during lockdown. 
• Private comments though Google Classroom as reminders on student work and feedback. 
• Email

Where to next:

Building strong relationships between ASLs and WSLs have been a real challenge for me as so much of this happens through email - and this is definitely NOT my preferred style of communication. In 2022 I think I need to find more ways to build relationships beyond emails and two termly coaching meetings.  

4 Learning-focused culture: Develop a culture that is focused on learning, and is characterised by respect, inclusion, empathy, collaboration and safety.

• Start each course with some team building games to help develop classroom culture. 
• Include games for learning where ever possible to revise learning, but also to continue building a classroom culture. Eg. cranium using keywords and terms, image reveal game (revealing one tiny section of an image at a time and students have to guess what it is), pictionary and charades with keywords, etc.
• Valuing diversity that students bring to the classroom where students need to draw on their culture for success, eg. thinking about cultural food, interviewing someone from your own culture, researching an aspect of your own culture. 
  
  
  
  
  
• Using proven best practice strategies that helps all learners succeed eg. regularly updating glossary with key terms, supported by translating explanations into their own words (including own native language if appropriate), as well as finding an image or example. 
  
  
  

Where to next:

An idea that I keep coming back to based on some of the reading I have been doing around culturally sustaining pedagogy is the idea of how we create a sense of belonging in our classrooms. Hence, for some time now I have been thinking about how I might create 'whanau' style groups in my biology classroom to help students have a base group to get feedback from, ask questions, etc. In 2022 my level 2 biology class will be quite big, hence this seems like the ideal situation to creat smaller groups where the students can been a greater sense of belonging. 

5 Design for learning: Design learning based on curriculum and pedagogical knowledge, assessment information and an understanding of each learner’s strengths, interests, needs, identities, languages and cultures.

• Using a range of modes to determine what level students are at including
• Quizizz and Kahoots to quickly assess understanding of key terms. 
• Checkpoints for assessments to check student progress. 
• Use of inquiry learning approaches to facilitate students directing the direction of their own learning. 
• One helpful thing we did to support the research aspect was that  each student recorded their inquiry question on a page. Each page was then passed around the class for other students to suggest 'search terms' for the student to try when researching. 
  
  
  
  
  

Another helpful tool for developing student research skills was playing research bingo. This was especially helpful for senior students as it helped them to learn the skills to use a range of databases for their research, rather than just Google. 

Where to next:

Design for learning is probably the aspect of my teaching practice that I have put the most effort in to over the past few years. I have had particularly focusses on facilitating collaboration, inquiry learning, games for learning, and Mātauranga Māori. In 2022, I intend to go back to the Universal Design for Learning practices and develop them further. I have selected this as a focus because I still think there are many of our priority learners that are not served particularly well my senior science courses. 

6 Teaching: Teach and respond to learners in a knowledgeable and adaptive way to progress their learning at an appropriate depth and pace. 

• Use of Google Classroom's grade book function to track engagement and progress. 
• Using SOLO Taxonomy to design tasks to ensure adequate scaffolding and success for all learners. Eg. This musical instrument design challenge for year 9/10, and this meiosis task for year 12. 
• Designing learning with a UDL approach ie. including video and text explanations with tasks, multiple modes of learning in activities eg. making an instrument, providing choice in assessment task output. 
• Students were particularly supported to develop agency by developing their planning skills throughout lockdown. In particular, working one on one with students to complete their daily planner until they were both confident and capable of completing this themselves proved infinitely valuable in helping students manage themselves. 
• Providing students with adequate feedback on their work including using:
• Rubric, comment bank, and private comments functions in Google Classroom.
• Providing clear checkpoints for assessments where students submit work for feedback. 
• Requiring students to incorporate feedback to progress in a task. Eg. students were required to produce a draft script for feedback before producing a final script and submitting this for feedback. 

Where to next:

There is overwhelming amounts of research that indicates the quality feedback at the right time makes a huge difference in student learning. Hence in 2022, I intend to keep refining my practice re. giving quality feedback in a timely manner.