Day 3 of the Blogging Challenge

"We are what we repeatedly do." ~Will Durant in The Story of Philosophy, 1924

Day three of the Reflective Teaching Blogging Challenge asks us to, "discuss one 'observation' area that you would like to improve on for your teacher evaluation.' After giving this some thought, I realised after moving into a single-subject role some of my practices changed and I lost a bit of what I valued when establishing a classroom culture or learning community. I think that this may have been a result of learning how to work effectively with many other teachers, accommodating their needs and how to best support technology integration within their classes.

When I was a class teacher I spent a great deal of time ensuring that our classroom was a democratic, shared learning space. Where individual differences were acknowledged and valued and students were empowered to decide how the space would best meet their learning needs. It was an environment that was flexible and open, one that provided student voice and choice, with clear learning intensions. I would like to get back to that type of a space. Where students can make choices about what's next for their learning journey and how I can best support them to achieve their goals.

I cannot escape the reality of needing to provide support for technology integration for the teachers, but I can be more thoughtful about providing different learning paths to enable their students to acquire the skills and knowledge they need. I can also promote a technologically literate mind-set when working with the different classes. I know that once my badging system is operational, it will be a good tool to help support students' personalised learning options. In the meantime, I think I need to think about how I can promote student voice, encourage choice and model a growth mindset.