My Professional Community:
1: Who are the stakeholders of your professional community? In what ways do they influence your practice?
Within the context of my professional community there are many different stakeholders. Three key stakeholders are the learners (ako), parents and whanau, and school staff.
As an educator my key stakeholders are the learners that I teach. Their needs (learning, and well being) are the central focus of my practice. Ensuring that I meet each individual's needs acts as the key foundation of what I do.
Parents and whanau also serve as a major stakeholder in my professional community. By creating positive partnerships with the families of the learners in my classroom I hope to better meet the needs of the learners. keeping whanau involved and helping them contribute positively to the child's learning is a way that my practice has been influenced by these stakeholders.
Another major stakeholder which plays a large part in my professional community are the school staff (Senior leadership team included). As a staff our practice is influenced by working collaboratively with each other, and collectively working to provide support for learners.
2: What is the purpose and function of your practice? In what ways do you cater for the community of your practice?
As stated in the Practicing Teacher Criteria Overarching statement; the purpose of a teacher is to enable the educational achievement of all Äkonga/ learners. I regard this statement as a clear and concise summary of the purpose and function of my professional practice.
Ensuring that I cater for learners in order to achieve educationally sometimes require more than just providing learning opportunities. It also requires personalisation of learning programmes, attempting to provide the physiological and safety needs (Maslow's Hierarchy of needs), and building learning focused relationships (Michael Absolum) are all ways in which I aim to cater my practice for the community.
3: What are the core values that underpin your profession and how?My profession is underpinned by our school's values. Respect Yourself, Respect Others and Respect the environment (PB4L School-Wide WESLEY INTERMEDIATE). These values were established collaboratively by the key stakeholders of our community (Whanau, students and staff). If I expect learners to enact and underpin what they do at school, I need to make sure that I do the same.
4: What is your specialist area of practice? How does your specialist area of practice relate to the broader professional context?
My specialist area of practice is implementing and helping to facilitate learning change within our school. By working alongside the Ako Hiko/ Manaiakalani facilitator, we aim to establish the Learn Create Share (LCS) model in our school, and up skill teachers in facilitating learning in a digital context.
This directly links and relates to the broader focus of the community, by enabling teachers to better meet the needs of the students in a rapidly changing and evolving context.
The main theories that underpin my professional practice are:
Clarity in the classroom principles - Michael Absolum
Teaching as Inquiry Model - MOE
PB4L- MOE
LCS- Manaiakalani/ Ako Hiko learning framework
These key theories act as a foundation for most of what I do as a classroom teacher. Clarity strategies enable me to gain a better understanding of the nature of student learning, the relationships and methods needed to help develop learners' capacity to learn.
Teaching as Inquiry model helps me reflect on the needs of targeted learners in my classroom, and develop research and evidence based strategies to tackle learning challenges of these targeted learners in order to achieve accelerated progress.
PB4L is the school wide behaviour management system we use in our school, it helps develop consistency and high expectations through teaching targeted behaviour that arise. Students are taught how to behave in certain situations and locations. This has helped develop positive learning environments in our school.
