Hi. My name is Kenzie Beams.
I'm at Ross Park Primary School in Alice Springs.
This is my fourth year in a transition Year 1 classroom.
What number goes in there?
You can have a look. They all start with 6. That's a bit of a clue.
The national teaching standards,
it's really a way for teachers to reflect on their own practice.
So we ask kids all the time in the classroom
to reflect on their learning, to reflect on what they've done.
And I think it's important for teachers
to reflect on what they're doing
because when it's time for kids to reflect,
we can help them through that process.
You know, we talked about goal-setting earlier this year
when we had that meeting with all of the staff.
And I think the difference this year
was we moved to the national standards.
We'd been using the Teacher Registration Board's standards
for the Northern Territory.
So this is all a little bit new for all of us
and I wondered how you'd been getting on.
I know you identified two or three at the beginning of the year.
Halfway through the year now,
so I wondered how they're looking for you.
So one of the standards I pinpointed
was 2.3 - curriculum assessment and reporting.
So, knowing that we were changing from the NT curriculum
to the Australian curriculum,
what would that mean for my classroom
and how would I plan for that?
And I like the way that you found some good templates to use
when you showed them to all the staff.
That was a really leading piece of work that you did,
because other people aren't anywhere near down the track that you're down.
So you raised it with them
in a way that made it look like it's manageable.
"I found this a good way to do things."
So that was very useful.
Collaboration is very important with the national teaching standards
because the way you view yourself is different
to the way that colleagues view you.
So at the start of the year, when I was looking at choosing some goals,
I chose a couple of goals,
and I was talking and I was collaborating with someone else
and they said to me, "I think you already do that really well."
And it was just so lovely to hear that feedback
and actually pick something that maybe I do find a real challenge.
(GASPS) How would we write that as an equation?
Mmm...
So earlier this year, we had a look at the national standards
that have come from AITSL.
Previous to this, we used the Northern Territory teacher standards,
and this year we made the choice to move into the national standards.
So this gives us a real feel for
what does it mean to grow in our practice?
What does it look like to be a good teacher?
It's like giving children rubrics and saying, "What does it look like
"to get a good mark on this piece of work?"
This helps us say, "Where are the areas that I'm good at?
"Where are the areas that I need to grow?"
Donna, these are my professional learning goals.
These are the ones I picked out at the start of the year.
I think they're still really relevant to what I'm doing in the classroom.
So "Engage with parents and carers".
That's the last one.
It was an area, I think...
In my first couple of years,
I think I was always a little bit scared of parents.
And so my goal this year was to really get on top of
getting to know all the different parents in my classroom.
Thank you so much for coming in and doing handwriting.
So the ones with the dots -
do you want me to make up some extra sheets
so they can just practise that letter?
That would be great.
Communicating with your mentor is really important,
because they can sort of help to, I guess,
channel the way your thought process is going.
So they're sitting there, they're questioning you,
they're giving you ideas,
and I guess if I did that by myself,
I might have gone in a different direction.
Ooh, what's that number?
Do you know what this number is?
Forty hun... Four hundred.
That's close. Do you know what it is, Lee?
It's four thousand.
Four thousand. So it's quite a big number.
Professional learning is really important to me.
Being a teacher, you can never say you know it all,
because it just keeps changing.
So professional development is crucial for a teacher
because it develops you as a teacher
and it changes you as a teacher.
So any professional development that comes up,
I'm always raising my hand,
because you always take something away from it.