Professional Engagement
Standard 7: Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers, and the community

Context A: Participation in a local Aboriginal interactive dance and didgeridoo incursion to celebrate NAIDOC Week for cross-cultural understanding in the school, during my final placement.  

Explanation A: Participation in an educational incursion focused on insights about local Aboriginal culture was relevant for developing a multi-faceted perspective on Aboriginal culture. I engaged with local Aboriginal language and symbols, cooking methods, the meaning of the sounds of the didgeridoo, and some common practices of protection while out in the bush. Broader community collaboration and Aboriginal perspectives are important for reconciliation, as highlighted by Osborne (2017), and for effective culturally responsive pedagogy which is not tokenistic, as warned by Foley (2007, p.113) and Nikki and Moodie (2017). The experience highlighted important aspects of local Aboriginal culture as suggested by Nikki and Moodie (2017) and Foley (2007, p.106), and to be mindful of variations within cultures so that students do not assume there is one broad definition of cultures. 

Context B: Summary of ideas gained through participation in a Professional Development Conference on the staff development day in my final placement, conducted by Andrell Education Victoria, equipping teachers to teach writing skills effectively to primary-aged students.

 
Explanation B: The professional development conference at the school, developed by a Victorian organisation (Andrell Education), was very effective in terms of suggesting ways to gradually incorporate writing skills from foundation level. Writing is considered to be a critical area of teaching at foundation level, hence the opportunity to engage in professional learning opportunities targeted specifically at developing effective writers from Kindergarten level was valuable. This workshop suggested practical ways to incorporate writing into different genres and different key learning areas, suggesting not to teach such skills in isolation without context or experience. Furthermore, the opportunity to collaborate and discuss the elements of effective writing programs with other colleagues in two other branches in Sydney was very beneficial. The expected time-span for different levels of progression in writing skills was practical. Collaboration in assessing individual pieces of writing at various levels was also useful to gauge the assessment criteria used by different teachers. In foundation year, the students are expected to be introduced to VCOP Big Write from Term 3 broadly speaking, but specifically as soon as they are able to write words and sentences clearly. Obviously, the Big Write is to be followed by lots of experiences and talking. Foundation checklists are very handy and can be altered to individual classroom/student requirements.