Professional Learning

At DPS I....

Keep a record of any pastoral issues that arise within our syndicate. This might include behaviour incidents, correspondence with whanau, social issues or learning concerns.

Attend regular PL sessions alongside other members of staff. These are delivered both by DPS Staff and outside presenters.

Attended EducampWAI 2017, which is an un-conference where local teacher can share their expertise by offering breakouts for other teachers to attend. I attended breakouts about #NZreadaloud, STEAM, Exponential technologies and opening up the walls in digital classrooms.

EducampWAI'18 was organised and hosted by teachers at DPS. I attended workshops on SchoolKit and Zero Waste Education.

The SchoolKit workshop was a real eye opener, I had heard of it before as I have received the Student Volunteer Army box to help with our school service day however I didn't realise how big of a company it was and all the different things they offer.

The Zero Waste Education workshop fitted really well with the DPS inquiry topic for Term 4. We are looking at becoming a 'carbon neutral school'. There are lots of education programs for schools that are fully funded by the various Wairarapa councils and are delivered by their educators rather than simply being information for teachers to then deliver themselves.

I ran a workshop this year sharing my experiences with Chapter Chat. This included sharing ways that the base idea of Chapter Chat and their provided activities can be extended and used as a way to provide free choice and integrate inquiry/play based learning at senior levels.

Choose a Professional Goal to focus on each year in order to improve my practice. In 2018 this is in relation to guided reading practice.

Attend regular PCT days (once a term), which include sharing ideas with other PCTs from around Masterton and around the Wairarapa. I have found these days beneficial as they are a time to share struggles and triumphs with other teachers in the same/similar position. In 2017 these days included a lot of visits to schools around our area. These days were great to see what other schools are doing and if there are things that I can use in my classroom. While these visits were interesting, I found that often they included more things that I was glad we didn't do than things I would take back to DPS.

In 2018 these days are more about sharing ideas and developing our own practice rather than school visits. These sessions have included looking at workload how we can achieve a positive life-work balance, writing reports without feeling swamped and sharing resources or readings that we found particularly useful.