After 25 years with the same employer (and 10 years as a student in the Queensland State School System) I would have to say I am a “product” of Education Queensland. Suffice to say I have experienced continual and vast change in the workplace, never more so than the last 5 years. Fortunately, I have, as mentioned by Wendy, “capabilities and attributes beyond disciplinary knowledge”. This has allowed me as a teacher to cope with rapid change by transferring my skills and knowledge to different educational contexts. These capabilities and attributes are what I want the students I work with to develop. They can take these with them as they move from Primary, to Secondary, to further study and then into the workplace – continuing to learn as they move through the stages. Although different institutions and organisations may use varying terminology there is a lot of commonality in their “lists” which I collectively call 21st Century Must Haves.
As I am currently a teacher librarian my job is a curriculum support role. I teach every child in the school each week. I support the resourcing (students and staff), teaching of curriculum (particularly English and History) and professional development of staff. Information literacy and literature weigh heavily in my programs. As a beginning teacher it was all about imparting knowledge in subject areas of which I was meant to be the expert. My current practice is to help students determine what it is they already know, what they need to know, where to find this knowledge and how to best use it to construct new meaning.
Explicit instruction, productive pedagogies, higher order thinking, differentiation, pedagogical framework…. all currently catch cries of EQ. All impacting on my beliefs and approach to teaching. All keeping me a learner in my profession.
I believe that every student is capable of successful learning.
It is my goal to enable this learning to occur.
Edutopia.org 2013
Yes change…. While the big picture goals of our organisation ( to produce successful citizens) may change relatively slowly the way we as teachers are expected to achieve these goals changes quite rapidly. These changes require constant learning and change on the part of teachers and for me this is one of the greatest joys and greatest challenges of teaching: a double edged sword ! To be successful teachers we also need to be successful learners. Some days when it all just seems too much I reflect on what I expect students to do each and every day – to always do their best, to have a go even if they think they’ll fail and to keep on trying if they do – and truly appreciate their capacities as learners.
ReplyDeleteI like how you say your a product of the system. I wonder if the change you have experienced has come full circle or whether there has been an evolution of new and different methods. I believe that elearning is massively important in individual learning.
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