Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working with a group of student teachers and a few new relief (substitute / casual) teachers, and been given ample opportunity to reflect on my early career experiences. I still have vivid (painful) memories of my student teaching practical experiences, and remember how I graduated from university in 2008 […]
Continue reading →Over the course of this year, I’ve made some amazing connections through this blog, including some unexpected connections with local Western Australian relief (substitute) teachers. Relief teaching can be a lonely profession. To the best of my knowledge, there are only a handful of relief / substitute teacher bloggers, yet I’ve discovered that there are […]
Continue reading →A very informative video for Twitter™ newbies like myself – I wish I’d found this earlier, as I contains many of the lessons I learnt by trial and error … as usual … Twitter for Teachers
Continue reading →Today marked an important milestone in my ongoing efforts to build a Personal Learning Network via my blog & Twitter™. At 8AM Perth time, I joined in an international #edchat conversation on the topic of participatory / inquiry learning. Following the conversation via Tweetdeck™ (for Google Chrome™), I started out by retweeting other teachers’ ideas, […]
Continue reading →Well, 2010 has been an incredible year. It was a year in which I passed some significant milestones in my fledgling teaching career, and it was a year of immense, transformational change in my personal and professional life. As my year draws to a close, I am finally starting to realise my aspiration to become […]
Continue reading →As the Australian school year draws to a close, I have had the time to reflect upon and review my experiences teaching upper primary science during 2010. March-May 2010 – Year 6/7 Science & Arts Earlier this year, I replaced a science/arts teacher in a small independent Christian school in Perth’s southern suburbs. I taught […]
Continue reading →My Experiences, Philosophy, & Reflections Thoughts on Classroom Management A Process of Trial & Error – Developing my Management Approach My Jigsaw Approach to Classroom Management The Conscious Competence Ladder (Skill Development) The Four Stages in My Teaching Practice Classroom Management – Summing Up The 3 R’s of Effective Learning Environments Setting the Scene Overview […]
Continue reading →I excelled in my academic studies at university; however, as a result of my youthful inexperience, I always felt vulnerable and unprepared during my practical teaching experiences. While I had some excellent mentor teachers, on several occasions I found myself working with unsupportive, and in one case, overly critical teachers. One almost drove me to […]
Continue reading →As a relief teacher, I’ve come across many tough and extremely challenging classes, taught by graduate and experienced teachers alike. Walking into, and taking control of the ‘hard class’ is one of the greatest challenges of my job, and I have learnt that there is no “one size fits all” approach. These classes are hard […]
Continue reading →Today marked the end of my first year of teaching. I have awaited this day for a very long time, and it has come about through my work in 23 schools across the Government, Catholic and Independent school sectors. To commemorate this day, I thought I would share excerpts from my very first reflective journal […]
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