With teacher pay improving over the years, teaching is a competitive career with other professions. A teacher can rapidly be on a six figure salary and be trained on an ongoing basis with career options going ahead.
The profession is changing from one which was fundamentally filled with vocational teachers, who entered teaching because they had a love of teaching and a desire to teach, to a profession with a mix of vocational teachers and those who enter it as a long term career, one of the few that are predicted to last for the next 20 years through technological change.
This is a not necessarily a bad thing, but it does raise a challenge for vocational teachers as they are vulnerable in the system. By vocational teachers not targeting advancement, school run the risk of dissatisfied vocational teachers who are unaware of the gauntlet required for advancement - they will advance slower than career teachers.
For instance, a teacher focuses on their student cohorts and their craft. Over many years they become a passionate and great classroom teacher. They see a career teacher that is not as good a teacher, does not understand the craft required to become truly great at what they do but that has targeted the KPIs that are required for advancement. The career teacher can talk eduspeak, self promote actively, are involved in projects that meet STAR objectives, actively seek promotional positions, understand how to write a CV and answer interview questions, have been at multiple schools over a short period - burn bright but over short periods. Once the balance tips towards career teachers (are we there now? Panel training indicates we are!), this becomes the model for advancement.
The question I ask myself is does this help kids get better in classes? Does this promote better mentoring of young teachers?
There's a little voice in the back of my head that says - "yep, but vocational teachers, the passionate ones can also be the flaky, argumentative, the most painful teachers to manage as they are needy and require constant guidance compared to the focused teachers on career progression." And I hear you little voice, but when I look at exceptional student outcomes, being 50% in doesn't cut it compared to what some of these teachers can achieve. An evidence base shows this over and over again.
Are we, by encouraging a career based approach, turning our vocational teachers away from their passionate, "this is my life", approach towards a more career based (I do this for the wage and the six hour day) sustainable and minimal intervention approach because it is easier to manage and less likely to cause management pain, even if the evidence shows that it has lower student outcomes?
If this is the case, and to a lesser or greater degree I believe it is, we need to re-evaluate how we remunerate teachers and the merit system that in its current form is encouraging a change to a career workforce rather than a vocational one and that where career satisfaction is through advancement, not through student achievement. A teacher for life, cared for by the system, developing their skills, recognised by the community for what they can do, moving passionately with changes in pedagogy required and realising that they are blessed for being involved with a system that guides our youth not for the career progression that they are not getting.
How to get teaching to that point is an interesting intellectual question.
Saturday, July 6, 2019
Friday, July 6, 2018
Resourcing in a small school
Many organisations have worthwhile programmes that are offered to the school. They want to work hand in hand to deliver a project that they have developed. They have value and for larger schools are easy to roll out and have a target audience. The temptation is to take them all on for the good of the kids.
In a smaller school like ours, that is offered many projects during the year, the need to manage them becomes a resourcing issue. Excursions require a file of documentation, staff willing to participate, students willing to give it a go, a spot on the planner that won't cause disruption to learning and ensuring it's not the same six kids going on each excursion. We need to liaise with partner organisations, work with them and ensure that there is a win-win situation available.
What I have found is that we have had more success with organisations that ask our needs and then seek to help us reduce the issues caused by them. UWA Aspire and Rotary are two good examples of where this can work.
UWA Aspire had a clear goal to raise low socioeconomic student engagement with university and to raise their aspiration levels. We needed support for our Math/Science students and assistance with career activities. They listened and assisted us establish our Mathematics Academy by providing university students that worked with our kids and supported us with resourcing and food to keep them coming. They take our kids on a Leadership camp. They support our summer school with a venue and ambassadors at UWA. They come to the school for each year group and work with developing a career focus from year 7 onwards. We assisted them with developing activities that would fit our students. They assisted raising awareness of modern teaching pedagogy through their education faculty.
Rotary offered to help as a community minded group. They had leadership programmes and science programmes but waited to establish a connection and asked what our requirements were. We needed assistance in developing a strategic plan for the school. They worked with our board and now help lead it through our chairman with our Principal. Our kids wanted to be more involved in the community and formed a Rotary Interact Club. Rotary programmes could be run independently of the school, reducing administrative overhead, increased student involvment - resulting in community events and even trips to Singapore and London for our students.
Both of these are relationships that I have had involvement with. There are others, such as with the Smith Family, ABCN, with organisations within DOE such as SEND:BE and the engagement team which have similar impact.
I'm currently starting a music club after school (as we have no offering for music at the school), running some maths extension classes and building our Achievers club (students that have 4As and no Ds). A good model for external agencies is to pilot a project, have it running for a year or so and then have a model for a partner agency to develop. I hope these develop into something that the school can use for some time, like the Summer school, Interact club and Mathematics academy - each that involve 20-50 students (10-20% of the school).
A well meaning project can take up resources that may be better utilised elsewhere. These usually involve 3-4 students (such as the solar car challenge or a number of local leadership programmes), over an extended period, are expensive, are during school time, require transport (a bus is $300 per day), want access to upper school students and require teacher involvement for duty of care (at $600 per day, a "free" project becomes expensive). If a project can't be accessible to 20-30 students (which is a difficult brief), I think often kids are better off in school, somewhere geared to teaching large groups of students.
Where this is untrue is in the VET space, where small (1-4 students) projects have lasting impact on students but that is for another day.
In a smaller school like ours, that is offered many projects during the year, the need to manage them becomes a resourcing issue. Excursions require a file of documentation, staff willing to participate, students willing to give it a go, a spot on the planner that won't cause disruption to learning and ensuring it's not the same six kids going on each excursion. We need to liaise with partner organisations, work with them and ensure that there is a win-win situation available.
What I have found is that we have had more success with organisations that ask our needs and then seek to help us reduce the issues caused by them. UWA Aspire and Rotary are two good examples of where this can work.
UWA Aspire had a clear goal to raise low socioeconomic student engagement with university and to raise their aspiration levels. We needed support for our Math/Science students and assistance with career activities. They listened and assisted us establish our Mathematics Academy by providing university students that worked with our kids and supported us with resourcing and food to keep them coming. They take our kids on a Leadership camp. They support our summer school with a venue and ambassadors at UWA. They come to the school for each year group and work with developing a career focus from year 7 onwards. We assisted them with developing activities that would fit our students. They assisted raising awareness of modern teaching pedagogy through their education faculty.
Rotary offered to help as a community minded group. They had leadership programmes and science programmes but waited to establish a connection and asked what our requirements were. We needed assistance in developing a strategic plan for the school. They worked with our board and now help lead it through our chairman with our Principal. Our kids wanted to be more involved in the community and formed a Rotary Interact Club. Rotary programmes could be run independently of the school, reducing administrative overhead, increased student involvment - resulting in community events and even trips to Singapore and London for our students.
Both of these are relationships that I have had involvement with. There are others, such as with the Smith Family, ABCN, with organisations within DOE such as SEND:BE and the engagement team which have similar impact.
I'm currently starting a music club after school (as we have no offering for music at the school), running some maths extension classes and building our Achievers club (students that have 4As and no Ds). A good model for external agencies is to pilot a project, have it running for a year or so and then have a model for a partner agency to develop. I hope these develop into something that the school can use for some time, like the Summer school, Interact club and Mathematics academy - each that involve 20-50 students (10-20% of the school).
A well meaning project can take up resources that may be better utilised elsewhere. These usually involve 3-4 students (such as the solar car challenge or a number of local leadership programmes), over an extended period, are expensive, are during school time, require transport (a bus is $300 per day), want access to upper school students and require teacher involvement for duty of care (at $600 per day, a "free" project becomes expensive). If a project can't be accessible to 20-30 students (which is a difficult brief), I think often kids are better off in school, somewhere geared to teaching large groups of students.
Where this is untrue is in the VET space, where small (1-4 students) projects have lasting impact on students but that is for another day.
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