CPL Podcast

Rose Dixon explains what anxiety feels like and what you can do to look for warning signs in your students with special learning needs... 

“every adolescent wants to be popular and accepted... there is stigma in our society about difference and that really comes out in adolescence... it’s something I think we really do need to work on.

If you have an anxiety disorder you are going to find learning very difficult... it’s very hard to process information, to organise it and to retain it...

It’s important for teachers to recognise this, unless we deal with the anxiety disorder, we won’t be able to help these students very well.

The good news is that there are signs which happen before the severe blowout... and it’s our job to know what those triggers are...

And you can actually preserve that student in the classroom...”

For information about contributors and the CPL Podcast, as well as Journal of Professional Learning articles and Centre for Professional Learning courses, please visit our website www.cpl.asn.au

Kathy Rushton and Joanne Rossbridge discuss the essential concept of Critical Literacy. They explain why it is essential for teachers (in both primary and secondary classrooms) to teach our students how to critically analyse all texts and to help them to develop a broader view of the world . . .

For information about contributors and the CPL Podcast, as well as Journal of Professional Learning articles and Centre for Professional Learning courses, please visit our website www.cpl.asn.au

In this special edition of the CPL Podcasts, Maurie Mulheron discusses the history, politics and ongoing debates surrounding public education in Australia.

For information about contributors and the CPL Podcast, as well as the Centre for Professional Learning courses and professional learning articles please visit our website www.cpl.asn.au

Graham Sattler explains why it is essential to teach all K – 6 students to read music so that those students can play instruments in class. He gives some practical advice on how all primary teachers can teach these important skills. . .

Note for listeners: This episode was originally recorded for the JPL Podcast, hence the references to the JPL Podcast throughout.

For information about contributors and the Podcasts, as well as Centre for Professional Learning courses and articles, please visit our website www.cpl.asn.au

Rosemary Henzell thinks introducing a variety of texts is good for students and their teachers…

Note for listeners: This episode was originally recorded for the JPL Podcast, hence the references to the JPL Podcast throughout.

For information about contributors and the JPL Podcast, as well as Journal of Professional Learning articles and Centre for Professional Learning courses, please visit our website www.cpl.asn.au

Jenny Williams and Sandra Rowan discuss how teachers can create ‘writers for life’ in their K - 6 classrooms and encourage students to embrace writing and to enjoy it for their whole lives . . .

“Our focus, as teachers, needs to be on the fact that it [writing] is a lifelong skill that all of us need to be able to use, throughout the course of our lives, in a variety of different ways. And, that is because writing is one aspect of communicating – as citizens in a global world, we need to be able to communicate by computer across to different countries; we need to be able to make ourselves understood in formal and informal settings. . .”

“So how do we get them all engaged? It’s about student engagement. If we offer them choice even if it is as simple as A or B (‘so you could perhaps write an imaginative story about this aspect or you could write a persuasive’) . . . when they have to stop and decide (‘what do I do? Do I want to do this or do I want to do that?’), once they have made the decision they own it. It is really important. The brain research says giving them choice increases student engagement.”

Note for listeners: This episode was originally recorded for the JPL Podcast, hence the references to the JPL Podcast throughout.

For information about contributors and the Podcast, Journal of Professional Learning articles and Centre for Professional Learning (CPL) courses, please visit our website cpl.asn.au

Aarti Nand discusses teaching stage 6 Legal Studies and what you, as teachers, can do to encourage our students to choose this important subject and to help them to meet with success within it...

Note for listeners: This episode was originally recorded for the JPL Podcast, hence the references to the JPL Podcast throughout.

For information about contributors and the Podcast, as well as Journal of Professional Learning (JPL) articles and professional learning courses, please visit our website www.cpl.asn.au

Mark Harris, Chantel Mirzai and Cathy Clift discuss multicultural education and how they have made their school a really inclusive place to be…

“We have a really strong understanding of our context, and balance that by keeping abreast with research and evidence. So what we try to do, particularly as a leadership team, is engage strongly with what the evidence is telling us and consider the application of the evidence in our context.”

“[We work from] this idea that all members of our school learning community - who we define as our beautiful students, our wonderful parents, our exceptionally hard-working teachers, and our leaders - are working together with this unrelenting pursuit of excellence and this feeling that every single member of our school learning community can achieve outstanding outcomes socially, emotionally and academically. And what we’ve done is to develop a vision, a mission and a school plan where every program and practice that exists is to develop collective community efficacy.”

Note for listeners: This episode was originally recorded for the JPL Podcast, hence the references to the JPL Podcast throughout.

Additional text for Soundcloud: For information about contributors and the JPL Podcast, as well as Journal of Professional Learning articles and Centre for Professional Learning courses, please visit our website www.cpl.asn.au/podcasts

Kathy Rushton and Joanne Rossbridge make the case for specialist teachers for our EAL/D students…

“Some students might be recognised as having support… if you go back to the research, students need about seven years to develop the English language, academically, to get to the level that a native speaker would get to. So, anyone who comes into our schools not speaking Standard Australian English, I think, deserves specialist support.

… it is important for teachers to have as much information about the backgrounds of our students as possible… part of this is valuing what students may bring.”

Note for listeners: This episode was originally recorded for the JPL Podcast, hence the references to the JPL Podcast throughout.

For information about contributors and the JPL Podcast, as well as Journal of Professional Learning articles and Centre for Professional Learning courses, please visit our website www.cpl.asn.au/podcasts

Jenny Williams and Mary-Ellen Betts take you from inspiration to reality and back again…

“The key to being a successful teacher is seeing yourself as a constant learner…

You can come into a school that has a lot of its own traditions and its own ways of doing things… in teaching you have to navigate school tradition, policy documents, syllabus documents and the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day… over the course of you first year there will be a lot of experimenting and trying things out and that’s just the way it is.

…One of the things that is really important for us to come to teaching with is the idea that every year is a new year.”

Note for listeners: This episode was originally recorded for the JPL Podcast, hence the references to the JPL Podcast throughout.

For information about contributors and the JPL Podcast, as well as Journal of Professional Learning articles and Centre for Professional Learning courses, please visit our website www.cpl.asn.au/podcasts