Thursday Island, above the cemetery 

thursday island

Last week I was in beautiful Thursday Island. I didn't do any observations but I did spend time in the classroom working with the students - Josephine was there teaching computers to a group of Access students. I enjoyed that very much - enjoyed meeting the students and having a look around the island.

I managed to talk to Regina (admin officer) about TROPIC, so she is now aware of it. She seemed very interested. Intriguing things that came up - when I mentioned the behaviour management aspect, Regina wanted to know if this could be applied to staff. The other thing I noted was that behaviour issues are much more of a problem outside the classroom - ie problems that arise during the residentials, especially the longer ones.

teacher reflection

I just had a reflection session with one of the teachers and asked him whether he felt the process was useful and if there were any particular aspects of teaching he felt it would be useful to get feedback on. His concern was mainly with "getting in a rut" and he believes the process helps to keep teachers on their toes. He also said he'd be willing for me to come and observe a theory lesson early next year.

implementing TROPIC

Some ideas that came out of my discussion with Colleen yesterday that I want to capture before I forget:

• the micro-skills booklet - this should contain examples from TAFE teaching. One way to approach this is to write up a few we know of (or make them up) and send to teachers, inviting their comments and their own examples. As Colleen suggested, each team member could assist by talking to colleagues, gathering examples and writing them up or telling me about them
  
• of course I'm also hoping to gather examples when we run workshops
  
• this is about a general principle or value I hold about TROPIC - that it's as much about gathering and disseminating examples of good practice, as it is about giving feedback. As I often say, everybody has something to offer and everybody has something to learn
  
• another thing I thought of, is to include in every reflection session a brief discussion of how useful the process is for the teacher - I mean I think we should ask them at the conclusion of the session, whether they found the feedback useful and whether there are other aspects of their teaching that they would like feedback on or feel that their colleagues could benefit from. A way of finding out what the issues are that really concern teachers. Just informally - but it will help guide us to keep tailoring the program to suit needs.
  

more on focus groups

Perhaps we could plan and run a series of focus groups/workshops on different topics and different aspects of teaching. Micro-skills, learning styles... or we run workshops in the skills areas and focus groups to find out what concerns teachers have - how to engage students, how to build positive relationships with students, how to encourage students to collaborate, etc... The two could feed into each other, ie we could run workshops addressing the areas of concern identified in the focus groups. We can also pool expertise from both activities, I mean draw out and disseminate the knowledge and experience teachers have. This process would also be a way of raising awareness and of being very inclusive in how we develop our program.

focus group idea

A thought occurred to me that we should run some focus groups with teachers to find out what sort of feedback about their teaching would be most useful to them.

some learnings

I got some key learnings out of Thursday's experience of being profiled teaching Douglas's class.

1. It is imperative that we treat teachers with the utmost respect.

Leave the sheets in a sealed envelope immediately after the profile session, straight after photocopying them. Be sure that you pre-arrange a reflection session, preferably the day following the profile.

It is so important that we don't take the attitude, "I am an expert on teaching (or behaviour management or whatever) and I am watching you and will let you know how you did".

We are providing a service. Teachers are doing us a favour by allowing us into their classrooms. This is a sacred trust. Honour it and honour them. If we don't get that right, there is no point in doing this at all - no matter how "correct" we get the details. The feedback we give teachers needs to be respectful, honest and meaningful in their terms.

This comes back to Susan's point about having a vision. That's my vision - that we respect and support teachers. We need to convey that clearly and right from the start - or they are not going to want to know about it.

It's also of great importance that our workloads accommodate our ability to do this. If we don't have the time and the cognitive space to do it right, we can't do it. This will definitely require planning and may require negotiation about workloads.

2. It's easy to get videos made.

It wasn't perfect. I am sure to cringe when I see it. I didn't fully explain to Ian the purpose of the video and so he may have got too crafty with his shooting.

That doesn't matter. The important thing is, the video got made. We've made a start. The purpose was not to capture an exemplary lesson - it was to start to build a bank of resources that can be used for training - ie observation practice. I've done it - you can do it too. And we can only get better.

3. Another point that Susan made in conversation with me: in adult learning situations, it is not only the teacher who is responsible for behaviour management. I agree with Susan, and this is something we need to think about more.

A mature Torres Strait Islander man directed another student at one stage in the lesson to do something and this was marked as an example of 'disruptive behaviour' on the sheet. In my experience, and in my opinion, that man has more authority over other (younger) Torres Strait Islander students in the classroom or elsewhere, than I have. This (meaning the broader issue, not so much the specific example) needs a lot of further discussion.

4. The above point relates to a broader issue again. I'm much more interested in being "a guide on the side" than "a sage on the stage". Yes we do need to develop skills for sustaining positive and harmonious relations in learning situations - but I don't see the teacher's role as 'maintaining discipline'. Again, a topic for more discussion.