Professional Learning Course (N) – First Meeting
This week I gave my first seminar in my professional learning course at N. There were fourteen teachers and I understand that more will be joining us as over 30 signed up. I was very nervous before we began the meeting, I am always jittery before I meet a new group and then again before each seminar / lecture. I am always worried that I am not ready enough. Almost half of the group came from my own school which puts extra pressure on me even though I know they are a very sympathetic and friendly audience.
This is the first year that teachers in Israel are studying under the new rules of the Ofek Hadash educational reform. Teachers working under the terms of the reform are encouraged to study 60 hours each year in order to to receive a 7.5% pay rise after three years. The study must be directly connected to the everyday work of the teacher. In the past teachers studied whatever they wanted, including ceramics and yoga.
Despite this incentive to study, teachers are presently adjusting to the new increase in their work load – 3 full class hours and a few extra individual / small group hours. Teachers arrived at the course at 4 pm after a long school day and all worried about baby sitters etc. It is not easy to “entertain” teachers in that state. I was happy to see that all of my participants arrived in a good mood and none of them tried to blame me for being overworked etc. We started in a positive tone.
The first meeting dealt with:
- Introduction
- The course – content, structure and demands
- An introductory activity based around a personal ending to a sentence beginning “Writing is…”. I was very disappointed that I couldn’t show the photo story presentation I had prepared on writing. Technical problems are so annoying! I couldn’t find communication between my laptop and the projector. What a shame! If I can, I will show it next time.
- Group work with the report from the National Meitzav Examinations. The aim was to see what we can learn about the teaching and evaluation of writing from the report and to investigate what the present achievement levels are in Israeli schools.
- A presentation of the four principles of teaching writing by Graham, MacArthur and Fitzgerald, 2007. It was important that I brought up to date material to the first session, I didn’t want them to start with “we’ve heard this before” comments. I explained that all the participants have come to the course with a wealth of personal and professional knowledge and that the course will blend and extend that knowledge with up to date research.
- A discussion on the principles in which each teacher contributed an example from her classroom.
A lot of the material I had prepared we didn’t have time for. I prefer to over prepare and of course I will use the materials and the activities next time.
All in all the teachers appeared interested and engaged. Many made positive comments at the end of the meeting. We will meet again in two weeks. Until then I have to get the virtual campus up and running.
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