Standard 7: Educators engage in professional learning.
Definition: To me, Standard 7 is an important piece to teaching because there is opportunity to learn and grow as a teacher by learning from other educators. I find something that is reinforced throughout this program is the importance of collaboration with other educators. Standard 7 is in place to encourage and promote the importance of sharing knowledge to ensure our students are receiving the best educationg they can get.
Early Learning Conference (take picture of books and lanyard)
On January 29, 2024, the Elementary Years cohort had the opportunity to participate in the Early Learning Conference. I really enjoyed this conference and the workshops I chose to participate in were extremely informative and beneficial. The first workshop I participated in was called Effective Primary Reading Instruction by Adrienne Gear. The second workshop I participated in was called Connecting Classrooms to Community by Vanessa Elton who is a teacher at Ron Brent.
The workshop that stood out to me the most was the one that Vanessa Elton delivered. The whole concept of her workshop was to show how you can bring your students out into the community to explore and learn about the people and things that are happening around them. As Vanessa works at Ron Brent, there are many students there that do not get the opportunity to get out into the community, so I think what she is doing with her students is very beneficial and allows them to learn about their surroundings.
At the start of the year, a yearly fieldtrip form is sent out to be signed so that she has the opportunity to leave the school with the students whenever she wants as long as it is within the distance restrictions.
Something Vanessa does with her class before they go out into the community is they create a community contract. The community contract includes rules and expectations that the students and teacher must follow. This contract is created as a class and has input from students so that they feel they are a part of it.
She gave some great advice on how to handle certain situations if they start to go sideways, for example if a student is of concern because of their behaviour. The advice she gave was to always talk one on one with the student so that they feel involved and important in the plan. Voice your concerns and explain why. Come up with a plan like making them your bus buddy or the line leader for the day. Reassure the student that any time they start to feel dysregulated to tell the teacher and we will figure it out together. Involve the parents as well and keep them in the loop about the plans with this student. Sometimes parents need to be on call for their child, so always ensure they are informed about what is going on that day in case there needs to be a pickup arranged.
Some activities Vanessa has done with her students is visit City Hall, take the bus around the community, and go on longer fieldtrips like Camp Hughes, Nukko Lake, and Camp Friendship.
Something she always asks her students is who make decisions within our community?
- What kinds of decisions do they make?
- How do they make decisions?
- What else?
She told us a story about when she took her class on a walk and they ran into an arborist. The students started asking him questions and they found out a lot about his job and what it entails.
Vanessa also has created a Community Booklet for students to fill in about the fieldtrips they took and what they found out about the community to document their learning, the places they went, and the people they met.
At the end of the workshop, we went outside and she did a sensory warm up with us just as she would with her students. It was a fun and engaging activity and it’s something I will be incorporating into my classroom as a teacher.
I found this workshop was a great demonstration of Standard 7 as it was a great opportunity for me to learn from other educators and gain knowledge for my own classroom practices in the future.