Performance Framework vs. Personal Learning

Wow. That sounds a little dry as a title :) I'll try not to be too boring.

Queensland Education has introduced the Developing Performance Framework, which aims to (to quote) "provide all employees of Education Queensland with a process supported by tools and resources that will assist all employees to develop their performance." In our school this means working in small groups with 'facilitators' to develop an understanding of what our job entails, what we need more work in, what professional development we might need and where our future career aspirations lie.

It's been put together with all good intentions - they really want us to be investigating professional development which will assist our learning. But . . . well we had our first meeting last week in our small groups and it kind of bombed.

There are a number of reasons for this - it was a Monday afternoon, just two weeks from holidays and we're all exhausted, could be one. But after a week, I realise that this way of working - sitting in a small office completing a table and talking about 'where we need to improve' - is at complete odds with the work I already do.

Since I've started this blog I've really had my eyes opened to the ways we can use the internet to facilitate our learning. We have total control on here - we undertake our own reflection (with assistance of the people we come across and the questions they ask), we follow the blogs which cover topics which interest us, we follow the links they post to videos and articles and presentations and other websites. There is a world of expertise here, not just the skills we can find in a small group. Furthermore, this is a safe place to admit that you struggle with something, or that you want to learn more about something else.

Since I've been blogging, I've learned about books and ideas I would never come across from the safety of the school. I've explored and questioned ideas which just don't come up, even in the professional reading I undertook. I've discovered that I can get great ideas from a band teacher in the USA or a early literacy blog in Australia. I'm communicating with brilliant minds and loving it.

So, it's no wonder that the Developing Performance Framework felt tired and sluggish - why are we containing ourselves to a small room when there's the whole world out there!

Fly In, Fly Out

Two years ago, my now husband worked about 8 hours away from home. He worked on a fly in-fly out roster - 11 days at work, 3 days back home. It was particularly hellish, put strain on our relationship, but made it possible for us to pay for our wedding and buy a house. And he got a lot out of the actual work he was doing.

Why am I talking about this? Well yesterday, the Queensland government announced 'flying squads' of four, led by a school principal and 'elite' teachers will go into the 300 worst performing schools for a week to make suggestions of how they can improve. (BTW, the article has an error, we came 6th out of 7 states and territories, not last, but that's another story)

One week.

Yesterday this made me very angry. How dare they suggest someone can fix something in one week that we struggle year in and year out to fix! Today I'm less angry and want more information. How are they going to choose the principals? How are they going to choose the teachers? How will they persuade the teachers to participate - after all they're having trouble filling coach and summer school positions.

What makes an elite teacher? Will it be taken from NAPLAN (National testing) results (like everything else seems to be)? Our best state schools in NAPLAN were from higher socio-economic areas, so are the teachers there really better, or do the kids come to school more prepared to learn? Will they take it from individual classes? What does this mean for teachers with gifted and talented classes who can get good results without pushing the children anywhere near their real potential?

I really want to email my local member and ask her these questions, but frankly, I'm a little scared. If I email her, am I going to go on some sort of 'pesty teacher' list? Am I going to get a letter fom district office telling me to mind my manners?

There's the real problem in this state. We've been put into a constant state of fear by our government. Fear over pay rises. Fear over the next statement in the media. Fear over the next set of hoops we have to jump through. We're tired and scared and that makes us feel we can't stay in this job anymore, that we just can't take the next thing they throw at us, no matter how much we love the classroom and the students.

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A literacy Guru?

Yesterday was our training day for this term with the students returning today. Most of the training was pretty ordinary, mostly about reporting and children with ASD. But during the staff meeting the Principal called for literacy and numeracy 'gurus' to be trained. Nominations were called for and I was landed with the literacy role.

There is very little information (like none) on this, but since it's a government program, I am a little concerned. Readers and writers workshop are not the 'done thing' here, although there was a lot of work done on both in the early eighties. Instead there's a bit of a muddle in literacy in Queensland. Some people are right into functional grammar, others get right into text mapping or the four resources model of literacy. But when it comes to actually teaching the material, there's no overall philosophies coming from the government.

So how will I take my rather different way of teaching English (well different in our school, anyway) and whatever I'm trained to do, and use this to help others in our school? If I'm taught one thing, am I required to use it in my classroom? I really want to know what this position entails, basically.

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Today's lessons - revisiting mm, cm, dm and m while measuring ourselves; beginning our reader's workshop with small groups looking at The Arrival.

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Picture from Photos8.com

End of Semester = Slack Blog Writer

So, unlike schools in the northern part of the world, we are not gallumping towards a summer break. Instead we are gearing up for a 2 week winter break, and the end of Term 2 of Hell.

This last week has been particularly telling on how hard the term has been for all of us. We're having this strange crack down on school uniforms, Sports Day nearly had to be postponed for the fourth time (it's today!), teachers have to have 'discussions' with the principal about their report cards after making graphs of their results, students are going a little zany . . .

We're all on the edge, just waiting for the latest from district office to throw us over the edge.

Personally, I can't wait for the end of this week. First of all - it's my first wedding anniversary! Then two weeks of blissful rest, with the second week free for going in and reorganising my classroom. Then term three and a fresh start.

A Time for Teaching Reflection

For the first time this school year - about half way through now - I have time to sit back and think about what is working and what is not, as well as what I'm doing well in and where I can improve.

Over the last few weeks, as Qld teachers and schools continue to bear the fallout of the Master's Review and the ensuing comments in the media (many made by those who think they know all about being a teacher) I've been involved with a number of conversations with other teachers, our Head of Curriculum, friends, my husband and other fellow members and random people I catch out in the street (well not so much the randoms), about what teachers and schools need more of to increase student performance.

The regulars are all there - money for resources, better facilities, testing that makes sense, a refill in the lolly jar - but there are some other more serious topics that arise (not that the lolly jar isn't serious).

One that comes up a lot is the kind of in-service/professional development we get as teachers. Earlier this year I, along with all the other Year 4-7 teachers in the state, were shipped off to a 5 day literacy training course. During this time, I learned one new thing I could use in the classroom (from the presenters, anyway. My peers gave me considerably more knowledge.) While this was a worthwhile thing to learn, it wasn't worth 25 hours away from my students.

It's a recurrent theme with professional development. Many times they are someone talking at us, with little thought for the different learning styles or previous knowledge which may already exist. So when someone tells teachers (in the newspaper) that they need more in-service in Grammar (or maths, or science, or whatever we're failing in this week) it gets me a little irritated.

I think this is because I use reflection to work out where I'm doing well and where I could improve. I then build on this with personal reading, watching lectures and listening to pod casts. I search out new ways to teach and try them before reflecting again. Over the four years I've been teaching, I've built up a good understanding of how I teach, what my teaching philosophy is and where I want to go next. None of which will be improved by another 'talk-at-a-large-hemogenous-group' professional development.

I honestly believe that a greater focus on teacher reflection and the chance to shape our own professional development, using the tools we have available (and with the internet we have access to the best minds in the world) will create more professional teachers in Queensland, along with improved results.

In that vein - how do you reflect on the work you do (what ever that work may be) and do you undertake any of your own professional development?


My reflection master list

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Teacher's Strike: Still Going Ahead

Relations between Queensland teachers and Education Queensland have continued to sour over the last week as we approach Tuesday's proposed strike. Education Minister Geoff Wilson is continuing to insist that school's are open with supply teachers, moved teachers and teacher aides providing supervision. This is Education Queensland's attempt to completely negate the power of the strike.

Luckily the miscellaneous workers union has stated teacher aides are not to supervise large groups of children on their own. In our school this has left one non-union teacher running the whole school as a number of people have joined the union over the last few days, and all admin members are also going on strike. There is a possibility that some Special Education teachers will be ordered to attend school that day, which - if they're paid - makes them 'scabs', and if they're not, they are not covered by work cover. Not a good position to be in.

So today I'm engaging in my first union action - standing outside the school gate at 3pm with brightly coloured notes for the parents telling them to keep their children home. We're not allowed to hand them out inside, as that would clash with the minister's letter telling parents to send their children to school.

I personally continue to believe that we're not being unreasonable. As we engage in national testing, as we approach a national curriculum and we add national hoops to jump through like we have to jump through the state hoops - we need to have a national wage.

Teacher's Strike

So, in a rather controversial move, Queensland state school teachers will be going on strike for 24 hours next Tuesday unless there is a drastic improvement in the offer being made by the Queensland Government. It's not something we're completely comfortable with - we know it's tough economic times - but we are the lowest paid teachers in Australia, and our state is not the poorest in Australia. (Afterall, the Government has just paid for that Best Job in the World)

It could be an interesting week.

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In other news, my 5s have their first NAPLAN tests today. *deep breath*

In Moderation

There are two types of standardised testing going on in my classroom at the moment. The Year 5s are about to embark on NAPLAN - a three day extravaganza of high stakes testing in literacy and numeracy which leads to whichever of the 7 states/territories (and their teachers) which land near the bottom being beaten up by the media, their bosses and the Premier/Prime Minister.

The Year 6s have just completed QCATS, a literacy test which is more like regular classroom assessment. This year it was a description, an itinerary and a justification. This is low stakes testing, more used as a professional development tool for teachers.

This afternoon we spent two hours with Year 6 teachers from other schools reviewing marked QCAT tests and moderating them so we had a clear understanding of what different marks should look like. We began with those marks which had been rated as an 'A' from each school, moving our way onto the Cs - from this point, Ds and Bs are pretty obvious, as are Es. All marks have to be strictly matching 'Guides to Making Judgements' and we have to justify how we think a piece of work fits into a particular judgement.

For me, this is fairly routine. We moderate before all report cards, so - depending on the group of people you're with - it's a fairly painless procedure. I was with a great group, with a great moderator, so there were no real conflicts in our final decisions. What challenged me today was the amount of literary understanding I had to show to explain why a piece was deserving of a certain grade.

This struck me, particularly as the state newspaper has recently been making a big deal about how primary teachers are not 'experts' with 'higher degrees' in all areas of their curriculum (how many people do you know who have degrees in English, Maths, Social Sciences, Science, all forms of Arts, engineering (technology), and health and physical education . . .) As teachers we become experts through the work we do, through the time we spend researching a topic, through communicating with people who are experts in their field. We become experts in strange fields of knowledge like Antarctica, Fantasy Novels, the Australian Goldrush, Newspaper publication, Australian Government, the Olympic Games. Not to mention pedagogy, child psychology, special needs education, how to make a miniscule budget reach far and wide and how to teach your class when the class next door (without a divider between you and them) are going nutty.

Was today a valuable use of our time. Well the afternoon tea was great, which is usually a good indicator :) Seriously, though, there was a lot of high level, serious professional talk going on. I got to read an amazing piece of writing, written by an 11 year old. And I feel more confident in my own ability to make considered judgements.

But, on the other hand, in a state where the government has not even made us a pay offer, although our old one has expired, it made for a 10 hour day, without a real break today, on 5 hour pay (basically $12.5 an hour not counting work I have to do at home - I made more working in a food court). As with everything, there's good and bad in the mix.

Bring on next week and the end of testing.