Week 26 - Current issues in my professional context

Week 26 - Current issues in my professional context

This week I have found blogging a bit easier. I have to admit I am not a blogger and this is taking me out of my comfort zone. With this said I have been critically analysing issues of socio-economic factors, school culture and professional environments in relation to my practice and my community. 

We are a low socioeconomic community but as a community and professionals, we do not use this as an excuse for any problems we may have. Thrupp (2006) states "Families from lower SES tend to have different relationships with school than the middle class" .Our ERO report in 2015 has reviewed our school as having "highly inclusive learning environments for students and families".  We believe in authentic and purposeful learning this should be differentiated and respectful of the learner, learning should be challenging and rewarding, learning should involve reflection and assessment and learning should reflect the different styles in which children learn. A feature of the school is the culture of high expectations, where all students are valued as competent and successful learners.

Our school’s motto is “We love to Learn “- “Kei te aroha matou ki te matauranga”. Our school’s mission statement is to develop in our children a love of learning enabling them to reach their potential as confident, contributing citizens.

 Our school’s values are respect, pride, perseverance and achievement. For past six years, our school has been part of the Ministry of Education initiative – Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L). Our School has developed this initiative into Growing Great Learners – Be Proud, Be Respectful and Be Safe. Each week we have a Growing Great Learners’ Focus, which has been informed, by student behavioural data. GGL (Growing Great Learners) has played a major influence in my teaching practice, as this is a major area, influencing relationships and achievements between staff, students and Whanau. "The valuing of relationships as the most important factor influences our students greatly. To understand this concept, is to understand that a student from a lower SES is going to place greater importance on the teacher student relationship, than they are going to on their schooling achievements” (Gargiulo, 2014, p. 17). 

ERO is likely to carry out the next review in four-to-five years” (http://www.ero.govt.nz/review-reports/james-street-school-21-10-2015/) 

 As professionals we were extremely delighted to get this four-to-five year review and teaching in a low socioeconomic community. It is very important that other communities understand that teaching in a lower socioeconomic community does not mean we do not provide an extremely high standard of teaching and professionalism. 

Our school successfully implements the 10 elements of Stolls (1998) "Norms of Improving Schools “We are continually reviewing and updating and questioning how can we improve? 

References:

ERO Report James Street School - 21/10/2015 Retrieved from:(http://www.ero.govt.nz/review-reports/james-street-school-21-10-2015

Gargiulo, S. (2014). Principal sabbatical report

Stoll. (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, University of London. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Understanding-school-cultures/School-Culture

Trupp, (2006). Improving the schooling chances of New Zealand's poorest 

                         children: policy and community challenges. 

WEEK 25 COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE

17.5.2017

A Community and Practice are groups of people who share a passion or concern for something together. With regular interaction and sharing of knowledge they learn how to improve this passion. 

"Communities of practice provide an environment for people to connect, interact, build and extend the shared resources within shared learning goals" Cambridge, Kaplan, and Suter (2005)\

The three areas of a community of practise as described by E and B Wenger-Trayner, (2015) are;

1. The Domain: A community of practice is not  a club of friends or a network of connections between people. It has a shared of interest and membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people.
2. The community: In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other.Members of a community of practice do not necessarily work together on a daily basis.
3. The Practice: A community of practice is not only a community of interest–people who like certain kinds of movies, for instance. Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction.

My Community of practise.

Management team (teaching team)

Shared domain of interest: In our teaching team, we have developed a strategic plan and vision that best suits our learning styles. We have developed a plan for increasing our student’s engagement and academic progress. In this community of practise, we exchange knowledge about and around our curriculum that best suit the needs of our students. As we are, all educators and are here for a common reason with a strong focus on accelerating achievement for our students. Our team also belongs to another Community of practise and that is Whakcol which is all the schools including secondary schools bring together common practise and the shared goal of  accelerating achievement for our students in the Whakatane area. The Whakcol community of practise meets regularly to up skill, share teaching practises, and solve problems.

Examples of the activities and our Shared Repertoire:

My main community of practice is my management team (teaching team). We meet once a week for an hour and half. In these sessions we run PD (professional development) on a variety of curriculum areas, we developed programmes of learning and collaborate together with a common goal "how can we move our students?" For example, we are currently looking at PaCT in our management team. This then flows onto our Whakcol Community of practise where as a community of schools we share ideas, examples of student’s work where we mediate work and bring in other professionals from outside areas. This community then meet 6 times a year or more. 

My role within the community of practice:

My role varies from facilitator/ leader to an active member. These change depending on the curriculum area. In each of my roles I feel collaboration, listening and taking an active role is the key to a being a good community member. When I am the leader or facilitator it is definitely is more challenging for me making sure everything is working correctly and speaking in from of other educators can be out of my comfort zone. 

Reference:

Cambridge, D., Kaplan, S. & Suter, V. (2005). Community of practice design guide: A Step-by-Step Guide for Designing & Cultivating. Retrieved from https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/NLI0531.pd...

Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner, 2015, Introduction to communities of Practice. Retrieved from http://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/

Knox, B. (2009, December 4).Cultivating Communities of Practice: Making Them Grow.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhMPRZnRFkk