Becoming a teacher in the 21st century
The last year of my Masters of Applied Learning and Teaching degree started off with a global pandemic. Of course we were all somewhere when it happened, but it highlighted for me one of the key areas which becoming a teacher in the 21st century requires - being tech savvy. The MALT program focuses on how to provide 'hands on' learning for students with the underpinning philosophy being that people learn best in an applied fashion. While the world has getting more and more digital, we've all been pushed to fully online teaching and learning experiences sooner than we would have liked. We now need to catch up to where the world is and translate lessons to be applied...from afar.
Not only can it be done, it must be done for the sake of student learning. However, the scale for what is acknowledged as student engagement has shifted. While previously showing up to class wasn’t considered enough to be engaged, teachers since the start of the pandemic have celebrated students popping into class at all. It’s made us reconsider, what is reasonable to expect from our students anyway?
I understand from my 18 month course in learning how to be a teacher and working in schools, that the teaching profession is more of a sphere to be filled in and mulled over throughout the course of a career. It is impossible to know everything, however with focus on what you know, what you need to know, and what you don’t know…I feel that I will be a solid teacher in the 21st century. While we can’t know everything, we do need to know what we should know. We need to be aware of where the holes are in our own knowledge in order to fill the holes with what’s needed.
To help me keep track of my learning experiences and lack there of, I kept an excel spreadsheet throughout my MALT degree. Here is a snapshot view of the year levels and methods that I had the opportunity to teach and support teach.
For example, my spreadsheet which outlines the AITSL standards and what experiences that I have had to meet those standards have shown me that I am lacking experience in working with students with disabilities – 1.6 Strategies to support full participation of students with disability.
This is a hole in my experience easily remedied as I understand how to create professional relationships within the school environment and I’m confident that I can acquire experience in this area by engaging with the Special Education leader at a school in which I am working. Or I can seek out a voluntary role at a local organisation that works in special education. In my experience so far, educators are excited when others are interested in their work and generous with the little time they have because they understand that the good will comes back to them.
This spreadsheet, combined with the blog you’re now reading, form the digital bones of my Teaching Performance Assessment. The discussion to follow will include a guided tour of both resources as well as the sharing of more teaching artefacts during discussion. I hope you’ll enjoy exploring it as much as I have had fun writing and experiencing it.
Lexi the pre-service teacher and a snake on school trip to local wildlife centre.