I love teaching and feel lucky every day to have such a rewarding career. It is a great privilege and responsibility to teach the diverse range of learners who come to our school from many cultures, with a range of abilities and interests. I strive to be culturally responsive in everything I do as a teacher and actively reflect on my practice seeking advice from others and literature when I am unsure. Teaching for me is also about intervention, looking at learners needs and finding creative, innovative ways to challenge and extend learners while addressing those needs.
Collaborating is part of everyday practice for me and has been since I started at Pt England School in 2016. In my first year of teaching, I was privileged to be part of the MDTA program (Manaiakalani Digital Teacher Academy) and to work collaboratively with my mentor teacher Helen King as well as many other teachers in my school, the MDTA program and the wider cluster. I have continued to foster and build collaborative practices by actively talking about and sharing what I am doing in my class both face to face with colleagues as well as on my professional blog, class blog, and my class site. In 2018 I had the wonderful opportunity to collaborate through the MIT program (Manaiakalani Inovative Teacher) working to build a strong inquiry with support from others and I have also been sharing my practice with a number of outreach clusters.
In 2019 and 2020 I held a CoL Across School Teacher position in our cluster, in this role I supported teachers with their inquiries and any needs they discovered when developing their digital practice. While sharing my strength with others, I have also been able to bring back what I have learned from others to enhance my own practice. This role has continued to build my belief in the power of effective digital pedagogy and enabled me to build on my strengths. Many times I have been challenged to step up and learn something new or find a different way of approaching a topic or lesson and this has helped me to be adaptive to the needs of the teachers and students I work with. Prior to and following this I have maintain a Within School CoL Teacher role, continuing to work on detailed inquiries and tailoring specific interventions for the children in my class. I believe that Teaching as Inquiry is central to growing as a teacher and that understanding what we are already doing and what we want to achieve can help us to meaningfully implement strategies to improve the education and welling of children in Aotearoa.
