Teaching has never been so strange. With lockdowns, home learning, vaccinations, teaching whilst also managing your own kids… I’m not sure how we got through it all!

There will be kids who you’ve loved and know you’ve had an impact on.  The same may be true for your colleagues in fact (you highly accomplished teacher you)

But, because you are human, there will also be things that have happened this year that have felt heavy and hard.  Students you may not have been able to reach, plans that didn’t go according to plan, lessons that felt bad…  We all have those moments.

It’s important that we look at those and then let them go

I want you to move into the school holidays with a clear head and the motivation to move to where you want to be in 6 months time.

Join me as we answer 5 simple questions to help us celebrate the teaching year 2021, learn the lessons from that heavy stuff and let it go!

Grab your post-it notes my friend!

We’re going to use the power of brain dumping and the most versatile sticky note on the planet to push past those doubts and mean voices and take a good look at all you have to celebrate this year!

In this, the second episode in our series on getting ready to create evidence, we’re unlocking ALL of the evidence you want.  Armed with post-its, a timer and some encouragement from Selena, you are about to have more stories of practice than you can shake a stick at!

Don’t forget to share a picture of your finished post-it wall with us! We’d love to showcase it RIGHT here on the Edufolios website

How do I know what my comfort zone is?
This week, we’re starting a three-part series on getting ready to reflect.

In this week’s episode of The Reflective Teacher Podcast, we are going to start with checking in with your comfort zone.

• We will talk about how you can tell what your comfort zone is
• What happens to your career if you stay in that comfort zone
• How you can use your evidence sets to identify these zones of comfiness
• and what you might do with the information you create as we reflect

If you're stuck trying to work out whether you're a Highly Accomplished or Lead teacher then this episode is for you. We're going to delve into exactly what it means to be a Lead teacher in Australia.

Let’s get clear on this… A highly accomplished teacher is someone whose impact has expanded beyond themselves, beyond their students and has started to influence the other teachers around them.

If you are someone who loves to “support” others, who has a keen eye for “evaluating” and “developing” ideas, tools, processes, planning (and more!) or you have found yourself modelling a teaching strategy for a colleague or a pre-service teacher… then you’re already hitting several focus areas, a highly accomplished in the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.

What next?

This week I’m talking about the basics of Highly Accomplished.  

Tune in to hear

• Who (or what) is a Highly Accomplished teacher?
• What kinds of artefacts would I need in a Highly Accomplished Portfolio?
• What kinds of things do I need to write about and show to be a Highly Accomplished teacher?
• What’s the format of the evidence?
• What’s the process of the application and what do I have to put together to apply to be certified as highly accomplished?

What are the important things you need to know about Proficiency and the Proficient Career Stage?
The proficient career stage of the Australian Professional Standards for teachers is your opportunity to celebrate the impact you are now having on your students.

Whether you’ve been teaching for 12 months or 10 years, if you’re making a difference to the lives of students and their families and you can connect your professional judgements to that success, then you are ready to apply for full teacher registration (SA) or proficiency.

The great news is, this process does NOT have to be anywhere near as onerous as the one you experienced at university

Phew! Right?

I’m going to share 5 key ideas that will help you to stay focused and get your evidence sorted for proficiency.

Tune in as we discuss:

• What it’s like to be a relief teacher trying to get proficiency
• Who the hero of your story is
• What kinds of things are you going to need to gather and discuss?
• How do you avoid getting the wrong advice?

Graduate Portfolios and GTPA are about the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers
The Graduate career stage of the AITSL standards is most definitely a guiding feature of any pre-service teachers life.   37 specific focuses have to be shown to qualify as a teacher here in Australia.  

You’ll hear about the teaching standards a lot as you train to be a teacher.  Every module of your degree has been mapped and assessed against them.  They are a BIG part of training to be a teacher.

Then comes that one prac or topic where you have to build what feels like the worlds most enormous document.  The teacher portfolio or GTPA.  Your chance to show what you know about the standards… right?

You get to work, building your graduate teacher portfolio.  Working with your teacher-mentor on prac and your lecturers at uni to build evidence that you can meet these 37 elusive traits.

It feels HUGE

Heavy and huge.

Let's look at the Graduate Standards through some new lenses
In the first of a series about the career stages of the Australian Professional Standards for teachers, we reveal 5 key ideas that are going to make the processes of gathering evidence a lot clearer for you.

Mentor teachers (HA folks you are!) tune in too.  You have a BIG part to play in this.

We explore the perspective of the mentor teacher vs the student-teacher and how this can cause tension in this process.  We also talk about what can be done to solve that!

The lens and focus on the Graduate focus areas seem pretty clear.. unless you’re looking in the wrong direction.  We share some simple mindset shifts here that will get you to open your eyes and professional minds to some key focuses you MUST address as you build your evidence.

Tune in and let us know which one of the five ideas resonated most strongly with you.

If you become a teacher so that you could make a difference in the world then teacher accreditation should be about celebrating the difference you make.   Yet, many educators tell me that as they’re building their evidence, it’s hard to stay celebratory and joyful.  It’s hard to stay focused on the impact, the success.  Their eyes have wandered away from the REAL why behind their career progression goals.  Away from what matters to them towards trying to understand and meet the needs of something that is far less worthy of their attention. 

We all know that, if you feel good, good things happen.  When this quote came up for me from Gabby Bernstein’s Deck “Super Attractor”, it got me thinking about my work with educators across Australia. 

For many of them, the process of teacher accreditation is NOT feeling good. It’s feeling heavy and hard and overwhelming.

So, what can we do differently to feel good about our practice?
In this episode of The Reflective Teacher Podcast, we explore what happens during the process of teacher accreditation to move us away from that deep connection we have with teaching and our students.  

• We discuss why that happens.
• Explore patterns that I see recurring through educators every single time and how you can avoid them straight away.
• What’s happened to mean that we only write and reflect because of teacher accreditation.
• We ask what that tells us about our profession and what needs to change

Overwhelm, Doubt and Confusion. Teacher Accreditation can be tricky
When you think of accreditation and the Australian Professional Teacher Standards which emotions come up for you?

Often, I hear a sense of panic, overwhelm, confusion and self-doubt. I’ve been coaching people through the process of reflective practice and evidence creation for years.

That’s why I created The Evidence Engine™, an online course with weekly coaching designed to give Australian teachers a way forward.

A step-by-step process that’s full of recipes, tricks, tips that will bring you a BIG sigh of relief as you create evidence of practice.
Listen to the Inspiring Stories of Corrina, Jenny, Sean, Katie and Kerry as they share how they used the Evidence Engine™ to move beyond their barriers to success

I am absolutely honoured to be joined by Kerry, Corrina, Jenny, Sean and Katie as they share their journey through the Evidence with you.

They share what their struggles were before they came to the course, what they did as they worked through the Engine and what impact that had on them as educators.  There is so much to learn here from them.  From their view of the process, their responses to the teachings and where they have gone on their journey as they complete the Evidence Engine™

I am so proud of these wonderful, dedicated teachers.  I am sure you will be too.  Tune in to witness their growth, development and understanding.  It’s all a celebration in here!