It is 10 days since I completed a profile on a Teacher and I have not yet been able to sit down with her and give her any feedback. She does have the score sheets, thank goodness, but she will not know what they mean.
Work is so stuffed full of things that have to be done - how is it that I am going to be able to fit proper profiling sessions into my workload? The Teachers deserve to have feedback and in fact there will be no cultural shift to best practice this way without it. How do I make profiling more of a priority in the midst of the overdriven teaching workload? Already I am wondering about how I will catch up with the marking and planning and so on that I will miss out on next week when I am on the second week-long training session with Mark and Denise.
Is it just because it is so late in the day and I am still buzzing around trying to be 'productive'? That's part of it, but I am concerned about this matter when I am not tired, too....
Friday, October 29, 2004
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Profiling tomorrow
It is the eve of my profiling assessment. I am not sure I am ready for this - how will I remember all the different behaviours I am supposed to be recording? More importantly, will I be able to give some meaningful and useful feedback to the Teachers I profile? Let's see if I can get some thoughts about all this down on 'paper'.
It is important that the Teachers do find the process of use - a way of reflecting on teaching practice and a doorway to discussing pedagogy. We have so few opportunities to do this sort of thing as a profession. I want it to work. I hope it will be a way to help people become better Teachers, and to confirm what they are doing right. I hope it will also make it easier to ask for ideas when a Teacher has a new challenge that seems insurmountable. In particular, I would like Teachers to be able to discuss strategies for behaviour management whenever necessary. I don't know any TAFE Teachers who have huge problems with behaviour management except when they have classes largely made up of high school students. Maybe I will discover that this impression is not quite correct.
It's going to be interesting, either way it turns out.
It is important that the Teachers do find the process of use - a way of reflecting on teaching practice and a doorway to discussing pedagogy. We have so few opportunities to do this sort of thing as a profession. I want it to work. I hope it will be a way to help people become better Teachers, and to confirm what they are doing right. I hope it will also make it easier to ask for ideas when a Teacher has a new challenge that seems insurmountable. In particular, I would like Teachers to be able to discuss strategies for behaviour management whenever necessary. I don't know any TAFE Teachers who have huge problems with behaviour management except when they have classes largely made up of high school students. Maybe I will discover that this impression is not quite correct.
It's going to be interesting, either way it turns out.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Random thoughts about Teacher Profiling as a learning experience
I am part way down the journey to becoming a Teacher Profiler. Part of the reason people seem willing to be profiled seems to be that they want to improve their profesional teaching skills. This is voluntary learning in action - no course needed, no book, just a trained observer willing to spend 40 minutes in your classroom and tell you what they have seen afterwards.
It is an interesting experience to be in different teacher's classrooms. We have never really had a system that allowed such observation before. What does go on in classrooms? They are a public place for students enrolled in them, and usually not for anyone else. This is a form of practical privacy really. The potential for the abuse of power is incredible for the Teacher. The student is not without influence but in most classrooms, the teacher sets the standards for learning, treatment of the truth, attitudes and behaviour.
Blogging about this topic with other Teachers should reveal some interesting ideas and comments. Blogs can be sort of like classrooms too - only interested people read what you have written and participate in the discussion - they sort of 'enroll' themselves....it's another form of learning.
It is an interesting experience to be in different teacher's classrooms. We have never really had a system that allowed such observation before. What does go on in classrooms? They are a public place for students enrolled in them, and usually not for anyone else. This is a form of practical privacy really. The potential for the abuse of power is incredible for the Teacher. The student is not without influence but in most classrooms, the teacher sets the standards for learning, treatment of the truth, attitudes and behaviour.
Blogging about this topic with other Teachers should reveal some interesting ideas and comments. Blogs can be sort of like classrooms too - only interested people read what you have written and participate in the discussion - they sort of 'enroll' themselves....it's another form of learning.
Monday, October 04, 2004
Motivating adult learners
'First day back fog' lifted pretty early in the day today - it was a productive day and I was pretty content to be back, once I got there!
So to get back to the topic of motivating adult learners, some things happened today that motivated me to learn - a colleague and I discussed how we could learn more about teaching practice and how we could develop a community of interest around skills that enhance teaching and learning among teachers who are deliberately studying these things. We decided that while we would need some f2f meetings, we would also develop a web site so we could
The motivator for me was that we were driving this - no one was making us do it, no one else would gain as much as we would from it, no one would join the group without a genuine interest in the subject matter, and it was fun to think about how we could be collecting information in a unique way - no idea is really new after all - we develop our ideas in an environment of input from so many other sources it amazes me when people take entire credit for thinking up 'new' stuff...yet if we don't do it we miss out on noticing a lot that we could be using. I guess that's what I see as a major purpose behind developing reflective practice habits
.
So we'll see where this leads.
So to get back to the topic of motivating adult learners, some things happened today that motivated me to learn - a colleague and I discussed how we could learn more about teaching practice and how we could develop a community of interest around skills that enhance teaching and learning among teachers who are deliberately studying these things. We decided that while we would need some f2f meetings, we would also develop a web site so we could
- post interesting information for each other,
- have discussions,
- keep track of useful stuff we find, etc.
The motivator for me was that we were driving this - no one was making us do it, no one else would gain as much as we would from it, no one would join the group without a genuine interest in the subject matter, and it was fun to think about how we could be collecting information in a unique way - no idea is really new after all - we develop our ideas in an environment of input from so many other sources it amazes me when people take entire credit for thinking up 'new' stuff...yet if we don't do it we miss out on noticing a lot that we could be using. I guess that's what I see as a major purpose behind developing reflective practice habits
.
So we'll see where this leads.
Sunday, October 03, 2004
Reflection on adult learning environments
Tomorrow I return to work. I am feeling the heat wave that has hit our area in the past two days and am wondering if my returning students will feel it too and be a little reluctant to return to their learning.
It takes a lot of organising to get back on track with work/study for me. I would like to have more felixiblility in my own work envirnonment.
How does this fit with some of my random thoughts about an adult learner's learning environment?
One of the obvious keys to adult learning must surely be the degree of flexibility that can be built into a learning environment - accessible whenever the student has time, space, motivation, convenience, etc. Yet most adult learners I know still need some sort of structure to enable them to get their learning done. The need for structure does vary enormously. Online learning only suits a certain few and others need face to face (f2f) learning either in a classroom or a seminar or one on one with the teacher/tutor to got them through. Some can cope with online learning after they have made sufficient personal connections with other students and learners.
What about the assessment environment?
Some adult learners need time limits to get assignments in - some even beg for due dates! While others want to take on the whole course in their own rapid time, finishing well before anyone else does. Then there are those who appear to ignore all due dates, end of year closures, etc - and don't ever get their assignments in. Some are happy to learn for the learnings' sake, never showing the slightest interest in assessment. Yet for me, assessment is one of the keys to learning. Assessment should consolidate learning and cement it in to the long term memory....as well as give some positive feedback about the progress a person is making.
I have really encapsulated and simplified some complex issues here - and I don't think I have said anything new.
It takes a lot of organising to get back on track with work/study for me. I would like to have more felixiblility in my own work envirnonment.
How does this fit with some of my random thoughts about an adult learner's learning environment?
One of the obvious keys to adult learning must surely be the degree of flexibility that can be built into a learning environment - accessible whenever the student has time, space, motivation, convenience, etc. Yet most adult learners I know still need some sort of structure to enable them to get their learning done. The need for structure does vary enormously. Online learning only suits a certain few and others need face to face (f2f) learning either in a classroom or a seminar or one on one with the teacher/tutor to got them through. Some can cope with online learning after they have made sufficient personal connections with other students and learners.
What about the assessment environment?
Some adult learners need time limits to get assignments in - some even beg for due dates! While others want to take on the whole course in their own rapid time, finishing well before anyone else does. Then there are those who appear to ignore all due dates, end of year closures, etc - and don't ever get their assignments in. Some are happy to learn for the learnings' sake, never showing the slightest interest in assessment. Yet for me, assessment is one of the keys to learning. Assessment should consolidate learning and cement it in to the long term memory....as well as give some positive feedback about the progress a person is making.
I have really encapsulated and simplified some complex issues here - and I don't think I have said anything new.
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