APST 6 refers to the graduate teacher’s proficiency with identifying and responding to areas for improvement in their professional practice.
The undertaking of my Masters of Learning and Teaching program to date quite handily demonstrates my commitment to this professional standard – but the area in which I have been most proactive is in the act of reflection. When personal circumstances forced me to withdraw from one of my placements, I was suddenly faced with a lot more spare time than I had originally planned. I decided to prepare myself as much as I could for the remainder of the year so that when I was ready to undertake my placement, I would be able to give it the best possible effort (6.1). The deputy principal and university liaison advised me to consider a period of volunteer learning on a casual basis, two to three days a week observing and participating in classroom processes. The Victorian government has published a guide to professional learning in the teaching profession that would guide my volunteering (Fraser, D. (2005). Professional Learning in Effective Schools The Seven Principles of Highly Effective Professional Learning.). Most notably, there is the idea that I should be working with the pre-existing understandings I have about my students, and to challenge these conceptions. This I believed would help relieve my teaching anxieties. I would also take notes, reflect on what I observed and discuss with my mentor what I believed was particularly effective in the previous lesson (6.1, 6.2, 6.3). I volunteered for the remainder of the year, and it was an excellent decision. Over the period I would attend different classes with various broad and diverse compositions, including my first meeting with the young EAL/D student mentioned in APST 3 (6.2). I was able to observe and learn effective approaches to class transitions, noise management and disorderly students, most notably in handling ASD students.
I owe much of my confidence and poise in the classroom to this volunteering period. To this day I find a lot of my mentor’s classroom practices and preferences reflected in my own.
