Teaching Standard: Professional Relationships

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

Goal

Establish a reputation for being a professional who is open, honest and trustworthy with the best interests of my ākonga at heart, and a willingness to learn.

Goal: Professional Relationships

Action Steps

I will reach my goal by:

• Creating opportunities to introduce myself to whānau.
• Learning to pronounce ākonga’s names and learning at least one key fact/skill they have
• Being available to take opportunities such as helping with after-school activities to get a better understanding of the school culture.
• Stepping outside of my comfort zone to put myself forward and introduce myself to the staff.
• Establishing core professional boundaries.
  • Asking questions that develop connection and understanding, not gossip.
  • A professional dress code that fits with the culture of the school and my own identity.
• Become familiar with the school library, music or sports focuses.
• Continue to develop my own passions and interests in order to ensure personal growth and mental health, but also to provide opportunities for connection.

Professional Relationships Reflection and Evidence

Week One Professional Relationships (2-6 May)

Week One Professional Relationships Action Steps:

• Creating opportunities to introduce myself to whānau
• Learning to pronounce ākonga’s names
• Learning at least one key fact/skill they have to build an understanding of who they are as children and as ākonga

Week One Professional Relationships Evidence:

Students:

• SI– Just got a rabbit, strong sense of right and wrong [S]
• LI– Struggling with writing and sounds, amazing mimic and can quickly pick up what the correct answer should be by watching others [L]
• MA– Cheeky but defensive, can be sent off task by small issues, particularly when going against the rules would be required (e.g. borrowing someone else’s pencil to get work done) [M]
• MB– loves to help, but can struggle to work independently without praise [M]
• JU– technologically capable (the class go-to person for passwords and general assistance on the iPad) but likes to play up as the class clown when he thinks he won’t look like he knows something. Would prefer to get into trouble than be seen as ignorant [J]
• HA – Low emotional regulation for age, struggles with new learning and difficulty persevering, but enthusiastic when engaged as long as not overstimulated [H]
• MC– reserved but dying to standout, excellent reader and really dedicated student [M]
• KE– quiet and pleasant, so has been hard to get to know if a class full of exciting personalities [K]
• AR– quiet and easy-going. Even-tempered, and learning to assert himself. Great reader [A]
• MD– learned helplessness and needs to be prodded to keep going [M]
• PI– quiet in the classroom, but energetic at playtime. Academically cruises along, possibly influenced by those around him who strive for academic excellence [P]
• CH– easily overwhelmed and able to lash out physically, but also younger than other ākonga in the class. Expresses emotions freely. Can be very oppositional, but more likely to comply if given a choice or some power over his activities (seems very excited to complete work when his choice positively affects the class) [C]
• RU– thrives with attention, but is easily distracted; getting numbers around the wrong way when creating a 100s chart, which was causing her a lot of confusion in finding the patterns [R]
• JO – limited hearing and eyesight so has a lot of external assistance, accepted by the school community and supported by classmates [J]
• JA– Loves knowing things, but can struggle when learning things that are extending. Has been sweet and calm around me, but I’m told that JA has struggled with emotional regulation in the past [J]
• (I did not get a chance to meet all ākonga this week as several are away sick)

Week One Professional Relationships Reflection:

I have been able to work with almost all ākonga individually throughout the week. They are a welcoming group, ready to help, and test the boundaries! I am uncomfortable with offering/accepting physical affection and one child struggles with this. I also am having difficulty sitting “properly” and encouraging the children to do so as per the teachers’ instructions. I have been encouraged to ask questions about ākonga regarding their learning, and offer my opinions and potential strategies to assist ākonga development.

As predicted, I need to watch myself and be careful to avoid getting drawn into interesting conversations with students! We ended up slightly off-topic with a conversation about an old writer called Shakespeare who couldn’t think of a word so just made them up (in reference to sounding out words for spelling), and another conversation about blue being worn by girls and pink being the more manly colour, as well as high heels being worn only by military men in order to get a better grip on their horses, as part of a discussion on pink shirt day.

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Week Two Professional Relationships (23-27 May)

Week Two Professional Relationships Action Steps:

• Continue to engage in professional relationships that allow me to develop an understanding of students, whanau and the difficulties faced
• Discuss aspects of education, teaching and school with staff

Week Two Professional Relationships Evidence:

• Discovering “Play is the Way” as a daily commitment to developing the socio-emotional health of ākonga in a school-wide approach.
• Invited to a school trip to the museum with two different classes and able to spend time observing/working with Principal and older class, including trusted to supervise small group work.

Week Two Professional Relationships Reflection:

Settling into the school environment has been easier because of the support of all staff and families. Being able to join my AT on playground duty has meant being able to learn the names of many other ākonga in the school, and a little about them. The staff room provides an amazing opportunity for impromptu professional development from teachers who are intimately familiar with not only the children I am working with but their families – which is highlighting the importance of developing strong connections with ākonga and their whanau.

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Week Three Professional Relationships (30 May – 3 Jun)

Week Three Professional Relationships Action Steps:

• Improve setting clearer boundaries with students
• Continue to research and develop an understanding of prelogical approaches that are relevant to my ākonga
• Observe specialist teachers as they support their students

Week Three Professional Relationships Evidence:

• Able to observe a story writing lesson with Mrs W using the jolly phonics system and working to extend emerging writer.
• Improving in class management – correcting myself to say “raise your hands if…” and am including this in my lesson plans as a reminder.
• Was able to attend a district-wide instruction on the new Aotearoa New Zealand History curriculum with other teachers and principles from my school, and schools from across Otago, which provided an excellent opportunity to understand the changes, the expectations for the learning, but also to get a better understanding around professional development and on-going teacher education.
• My AT and I briefly discussed her rotation system, which I have been working within both while ‘walking the class’ as she works with small groups, and when I have had my own small groups to work with (I don’t seem to be able to manage keeping to the timeframe).
• Working with two different relief teachers allowed me the opportunity to see, and engage with, other teaching styles. Mr R has been a registered teacher for 2 years and has experience teaching in a wide variety of schools across New Zealand. He was able to discuss his lesson plans and ideas for setting up a classroom – he also introduced the class (and me) to Incredibox, which was highly engaging with all students. While Miss P has intimate knowledge of my school and is comfortable with the ākonga and the environment.

Week Three Professional Relationships Reflection:

A discussion with my AT reinforced that I am overthinking strategies. I need to work more on keeping ākonga working steadily, then waiting patiently rather than coming up with strategies to keep them constantly engaged with something. Although I still struggle with building my knowledge of the pedagogical language I am working at trying different strategies.

While I haven’t identified a name for it, my philosophy seems to be emerging as being based on having high expectations for quality of effort and perseverance, while encouraging independence. My ability to stick with a student to keep encouraging them is probably not going to be something I can maintain when teaching solo, although I am hoping to develop strategies to manage this in increasingly larger numbers. I seem to have spent a lot of time helping children learn to tie their shoelaces!

Developing a better understanding of pedagogical approaches will help me develop more accurate information about which strategies are working with each ākonga and which aren’t. This will need to be a focus before 1b.

I am concerned that some of my professional interactions can be construed as gossip rather than genuine interest in comparing different educational facilities – this is something I need to try to be more sensitive to and aware of.

Week Four Professional Relationships (6 -10 June)

Week Four Professional Relationships Action Steps:

• Continue to develop core professional boundaries with ākonga
• Share my own passions and interests to provide opportunities for connection
• Learn more about how curriculum delivery occurs in education (particularly in my school)

Week Four Professional Relationships Evidence:

• Working with relief teachers has provided an interesting contrast, however, a constant across the board seems to have been strong confidence in their ability to lead the class.
• Talking with my AT about how she manages “rotations” for reading and maths was an invaluable strategy for future reference. Although mentioned in Tompkins, it makes more sense when seen in the wild, showing how it allows the teacher to spend time with individuals/small groups yet still allows each ākonga the opportunity to develop their strengths. This was something I had seen in action within the class, and even participate in when taking small groups myself, however, seeing it on paper planned out highlighted the planning work that goes on in the background beyond just understanding and delivering the curriculum.
• Looking through curriculum delivery documentation highlights how the school works well together to ensure an integrated approach to learning but also to create a special school character. Each area of the curriculum provides an opportunity for educational learning, growth and development, but also encourages a sense of self, of well-being and awareness of the world around them. The fear that this is not reaching ākonga may feel real when school property isn’t treated well, but the achievement is validated when someone is hurt (emotionally or physically), or when someone is different – it is then that I could see how ingrained the C.A.R.E. philosophy was.

Week Four Professional Relationships Reflection:

My timekeeping skills could use some work – my small maths group was late to handwriting (which I was teaching) because none of us noticed the timer go off, or apparently noticed the other children in the class near us packing up.

Finding myself comfortable and welcomed has possibly led to more sharing than was necessary over the four weeks. However, I still worried that I was putting people out so probably didn’t take as much advantage of the incredible wealth of knowledge and expertise I was surrounded by.

While I leave 1a with a sense of “I can do this”, just as I have high expectations for the children, I also have high expectations for myself. So armed with curriculum delivery information, a mass of reading on pedagogical approaches, and a whole NZC to understand better… it’s going to be a busy time before 1b starts.

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Learning-Focused Culture

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

Goal:

Foster a love of learning through a culture of curiosity in an environment where investigation is considered, respectful and inclusive.

Goal: Learning Focused Culture

I will do this by:

• Asking “why” a lot
• Using a lot of re-voicing to ensure that I am building the correct understanding
• Sharing myself – the way that I think to get an answer which may be quite different
• Focusing on building relationships
• Displaying my high expectations by allowing ākonga the opportunity to show their independence of action and thought

Learning Focused Culture Reflection and Evidence

Week One Learning Focused Culture (2-6 May)

Week One Learning Focused Culture Action Steps:

• Asking “why” a lot
• Using a lot of re-voicing to ensure that I am building the correct understanding

Week One Learning Focused Culture Evidence:

• Working in small mixed ability-based groups to better understand dynamics and learning strategies
• Observing AT in whole-class teaching to better understand classroom management
• Taking the initiative to work with individual ākonga provided an opportunity to develop relationships and better understand individual learning styles and needs

Week One Learning Focused Culture Reflection:

With the primary goal being to get to know students, the classroom, and the professionals within the school, I have been lucky to be welcomed into a school with a strong commitment to fostering relationships. Being supported by a mentor teacher with exceptional experience in teaching, and an obvious interest in continual reflection and development of her own teaching skills has allowed me the confidence to test my skills and theories secure in the knowledge that I will be gently redirected if needed.

While my goals have been achieved, I do need to work on becoming more knowledgeable about the NZ Curriculum, and while this will occur as I develop lesson plans for the next week, I could also try to find time to create lesson plans that could be delivered to other groups and levels. I also discovered I do not have a strong enough grounding in mathematics and Level 3 to confidently teach this, and need to work on increasing my own knowledge.

I am still to define my teaching “philosophy” and style.

Week Two Learning Focused Culture (23-27 May)

Week Two Learning Focused Culture Action Steps:

• Deliver pre-planned lessons to the whole class
• Deliver a pre-planned lesson to a small group
• Continue to ask ākonga to share their thinking
• Develop my understanding of learning difficulties and strategies with support from my AT
• Continue to develop my knowledge of the NZC
• Work through learning achievements to ensure I have the knowledge to meet these myself.

Week Two Learning Focused Culture Evidence:

• Created a lesson plan using the Teacher Support Material (TSM) available for Ready-to-Read Colour Wheel books in the TKI Literacy Community. https://instructionalseries.tki.org.nz/Instructional-Series/Ready-to-Read-Colour-Wheel/Stuck
• Delivered a small group mathematics lesson (1 child) using “Animal Arrays” plan from NZ Maths (Book 6) and resources available in class.
• Working with the class resource to reinforce “sets of” as the underlying concept of multiplication (using “x sets/groups of “mixed objects” was more challenging than using “x sets/groups of [same objects]”). Extended the concept by asking for 8 sets of objects when we didn’t have enough ‘sets’ to do this.
• Delivered 3 full-class handwriting lessons. Managed to get one ākonga who was resistant to completing the work to do so by allowing him to select which number we would focus on in that lesson.
• Delivered a whole class lesson on te reo Maori using early reader bilingual books “He Hanawiti”, “Ika Nui” and “Tokohia”.

Week Two Learning Focused Culture Reflection:

I need to work on staying on task with students. E.g. the maths lesson went longer than needed when we got off topic discussing trillions. In delivering whole class lessons I need to reinforce the need for ākonga to raise their hands to answer – this includes changing my questioning from “who knows” to “raise your hand if you know”. Reading off my lesson plan is still essential – for example in my third handwriting lesson I went off script when talking about how some lowercase k’s look like upper case Rs, then accidentally asked ākonga to write a line of r’s – when I meant k. I am navigating through TKI better, but still struggling with understanding pedagogical strategies and aligning the Numeracy Professional Development Projects with curriculum levels.

Although my goal of “Foster a love of learning through a culture of curiosity in an environment where investigation is considered, respectful and inclusive” remains unchanged, and will likely be a lifelong goal, my action steps are developing and growing on a seemly daily basis.

Week Three Learning Focused Culture (30 May – 3 Jun)

Week Three Learning Focused Culture Action Steps:

• Work with a specialist teacher to develop a better understanding of special needs education
• Develop clearer boundaries now that ākonga are beginning to test the boundaries
• Deliver a small group maths lesson working through the “diagnostic snapshot” section of appropriate lessons in NZ Maths Book 6: Teaching Multiplication and Division to find knowledge gaps. (Continue to discuss with AT at end of day debrief)
• Deliver small group reading lesson, moving up to the next level – discuss with AT appropriate methods to judge comprehension and understanding
• Deliver whole class lesson for “Whānui Time”, teaching te reo Maori alongside appropriate tikanga to create a whole te ao Māori understanding
• Create & deliver a whole class lesson on “Cooperative Air Hockey” to align stress reduction techniques and the current science topic of “force”
• Self-directed learning on mathematics learning achievements
• Self-directed learning on PB4L
• Self-directed learning on Play is The Way

Week Three Learning Focused Culture Evidence:

• Working with Mrs W to get a better understanding of how to teach and support students with story writing. She asks the student to tell her the sentence they want to write, she takes note of it (in shorthand), and then they start to write, using the Jolly Phonics system to help sound out words. Each word is sounded out, written down, and said, then the sentence is re-read from the begging. Getting the sound written is more important than getting the spelling right – so kake is OK. However, with words such as “was” they were told how to spell it as the ‘a’ does have an ‘o’ sound so poor habits can form.
• Talking with AT about the range of resources each teacher collects to assist with teaching, and how resources can be adapted to suit other unit lessons. This was my first time using a Slavic Abacus, so was particularly interesting (and tamariki thoroughly enjoyed helping me learn how to use one – I was holding it upside down apparently, so in helping me they needed to explain what the different colours meant too).

Week Three Learning Focused Culture Reflection:

One of the things I’ve found I struggle with is closing a lesson – particularly in a situation where feedback is required after a whole class lesson. This is partially due to still being unsure about timing, and being worried that my AT will have something else planned afterwards (so I need to actually check to see what would be next!) and partially just because I haven’t really found my “groove” yet.

Going through the handwriting books to notice any changes since I started teaching the handwriting lessons. Although most have remained steadily improving, and one has been more engaged, one ākonga seems to have almost stopped working. Going through all the work has given me an opportunity to gauge where each child is in relation to the others in the class, and where each child is in relation to their own growth – I think this will allow me to make more productive comments and feedback next week.

Week Four Learning Focused Culture (6 -10 June)

Week Four Learning Focused Culture Action Steps:

• Continue to develop teaching ‘style’
• Work on providing feedback to ākonga individually and as a group
• Develop my preferred style to gain attention
• Self-directed learning on mathematics learning achievements
• Deliver small group maths lessons working through the “diagnostic snapshot” section of appropriate lessons in NZ Maths (continue to discuss with AT at end of day debrief)
• Deliver small group reading lesson, moving up to the next level – discuss with AT appropriate methods to judge comprehension and understanding
• Deliver whole class lesson for “Whānau Hui”, teaching te reo Māori alongside appropriate tikanga to create a whole te ao Maori understanding

Week Four Learning Focused Culture Evidence:

• There are some ākonga who are such confident singers and come to life when they’re leading the singing, whether in English or Māori
• Weaving the Matariki stars was a great “low floor, high ceiling” activity – it wasn’t hard to make something pretty, but those that took their time or ‘got’ the concept made some really beautiful art – and several ākonga who normally have limited focus were not only able to finish but to show leadership by patiently helping other ākonga who struggled
• Handwriting remains a learning curve for me – something seemingly simple but so vital to get at this fundamental stage of learning. My own handwriting is improving (as is my pencil grip now I know the more effective way to hold a pen!), and as I learn more about the correct curriculum delivery for handwriting at the school my teaching is improving. Making deliberate mistakes has been great for introducing punctuation and common spelling errors (today v tobay) or phonetic errors (neat v nead), but has also been able to indicate potential gaps in learning or visual ability

Week Four Learning Focused Culture Reflection:

Creating Matariki stars with the whole class was wonderful fun. Because the whole school will be doing several units around Matariki in the next few weeks, I kept my discussion to a minimum (and was impressed with how much the ākonga already knew). After a quick demonstration, those that felt they knew what to do were allowed to give it a go at their desks, while everyone else formed a circle on the floor and we all worked together to create the woven stars. This also fits in with the previous art projects which have been based around weaving in different styles.

One of the biggest lessons was with Whanau Hui. The book I read was incredibly boring in English (more suitable as an early reader rather than a read to class) with phrases like “stamp your feet”, and wasn’t much more exciting in the lesser familiar Māori. If I was to run this lesson again I would have the class read the story with me and see if that helped. However, getting them to follow the actions from the book in te reo Māori was great fun, and would lend itself well to so many other games as we all become more familiar with directions and instructions.

Because I am not the teacher, I allow myself the time to talk with ākonga while they are venting about a perceived injustice, however, I can’t see how this is something I could manage when I have three such occurrences, a learner needing help, a learner needing extension, and the remainder of the class who want to learn with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Going into practicum 1a classroom management was one of my biggest concerns, and it remains a worry, although I am now more confident that this is something I will get better at with time and practice. So I can redirect my concerns to understanding the curriculum content better, and different pedagogical approaches that might work well with different ākonga in this class group.

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Record of Teaching