I am in the fortunate situation of working at a school that supports teacher development. I was recently discussing my long list of professional development opportunities this year with a fellow teacher from another school, who told me that he is allowed one school day per year for PD. At our school, we must do a minimum of one day during school hours and one day during our own time. I've picked out some really helpful ones so far!
PD aside though, we have a number of initiatives inside the school that focus on teacher improvement in some way or another. Probably the most significant of these is what I call the Curtin program. Really, its a student feedback survey about classroom climate coordinated by a team from Curtin University. A lot of work happens behind the scenes to make it possible but, as the teacher, I get to see feedback on how my students see my classroom, and how they would like it to be. It's split into a number of categories that make it easy to see where to focus efforts for improvement, and a post-intervention test is conducted to see whether the efforts have worked. As well as actually doing the survey, teachers are asked to:
- set goals for improvement (aided by a planning tool in the form of a table)
- discuss goals with colleagues in small curriculum teams
- reflect on the process
Although I have already been through this process once, and this cycle is nearing its end (next week is post-intervention test!), I will post some of my reflections up here to share my experiences. Expect to see some posts about the effectiveness of student surveys, and about experimenting on students!
