Mentoring New Teachers

As part of the certification process, provisionally certificated teachers are required to reflect on the learning that has taken place on the things that they are reporting on. There could be reflection on: PLD - what did you learn from whole school PLD, departmental PLD, Mentor PLD meetings - what meetings have you attended, date, time, who with, brief summary reflection teachers whose lessons you have observed - what did you take bck into your own practice and how did it go? learning conversations with mentors, colleagues, SLT reflection on the PAT & asTTle data you have received for your classes reflection on NCEA assessments you have made How does the use of the SOLO taxonomy lift the quality of student thinking and work? What culturally responsive practices have you used with Maori/Tongan, Samoan etc students - what was the result? How do the key competencies and school RISE values fit into the students' learning? This reflection tool can help with the refle...

    One of our Teach First teachers is Māori and ran a great session for the PCTs (Provisionally Certificated Teachers) on how they could introduce biculturalism into their teaching. Criteria 3 of the Practising Teacher Criteria says that fully registered teachers " demonstrate commitment to bicultural partnership in Aotearoa NZ by demonstrating respect for the heritages, languages & cultures of both partners of the Treaty of Waitangi". The question is how can teachers reflect this in their work? The best way to start is to make sure that Maori names are pronounced correctly. He showed us a chart that we could use to practise pronounciation and took us through the process of repeating the words after him. There is a version of this here with audio that anyone can use. This teacher had demonstrated the meaning of a treaty by creating a class treaty based on the RISE values of the school. The students put their own statements into the treaty using their thoughts ...

The advantage of working with trainee teachers (Teach First teachers) when you have been teaching for a long time is that it takes you back to the beginnings of things like classroom management 1.01 and behaviour management basics. Building Relationships and Expectations are crucial in the first few weeks.  Tamaki College has a set of values called RISE (Respect, Integrity, Success, Responsibility) which are embedded into the vision and ways of working in the school. The students are familiar with these and they work well. The teacher will also set other expectations to do with behaviour, work, tools, listening and following instructions. These will all enable the development of positive relationships between teacher and students and so make the teaching and learning more productive. See building relationships with Pasifika students here  and with Māori students here . Setting up a routine and sticking to it is also crucial to developing a good and safe physical and e...

There is a very useful resource here   which gives e-learning links, guides and tools that you can use when working digitally with students. There are examples for each of the 12 PTC including some good stuff on e-learning and teaching as inquiry for Criteria 4 & 12.

This year I have been appointed to the role of Specialist Classroom Teacher and Mentor Teacher for Teach First Teachers and Provisionally Certificated Teachers at Tamaki College.I had a vague idea as to what a Teach First Teacher was so I went to this site  http://teachfirstnz.org/  and found stories and videos from the participants themselves. I was pleased to see that Tamaki College is a Manaiakalani school as this will push me further in my digital journey. Already I am having to create a Google site which I haven't done before and as part of my appraisal create a blog which will evidence my learning journey. I dragged my dinosaur colleagues into Blogger last year so this is not new. Last year's blog was a collaboration to investigate the true meaning of collaboration through readings and the practicalities of working together to construct knowledge. This year I will be spending a lot of time in the classroom with the 11 teachers I am supporting.