We poke the bear – but we listen to the bear too!
At Real Schools, we really like to give you something to think about with our Newsletters. Sometimes it’s about your School Culture and sometimes it’s about the critical Practice of our Teachers. From time to time we also touch on challenges in Student Behaviour, Bullying, harnessing the support of your Community and simplifying the mounting accountabilities placed upon contemporary Australian schools.
We find that you tend to agree that these are important topics and so we confront them – head on! That’s why our Newsletters are sometimes a little … oh … provocative. It’s true that we struggle to resist the urge to poke the bear occasionally! We have no intention of keeping things comfortable for our colleagues, for it’s in the discomfort and the difficult conversations that we sharpen our educational tools. We find out what matters. When we overcome challenges and tackle what really matters we step into our expertise and prioritise the most fundamental purposes of our schools. And that’s got to be a good thing.
When it comes to what makes it hard to improve our schools, we’ve listened intently. Where other bodies may be charged ‘upping the ante’ on schools in the quest for you all to be more and to do more, we’re only interested in what YOU tell us you need. We actually believe in the right of schools to drive their own improvement agendas. So what are all our Partners and Members telling us is the big problem?:
1) That School Leaders are spending less than 1% of their time working directly with Teachers about improving practice.
2) That supporting Teachers to improve classroom practice can’t be done by just sending them to a workshop on ‘Behaviour Management’ once a year.
It takes more. It takes a comprehensive approach. It takes time. It takes expertise. It takes a whole new way of looking at Teacher Professional Learning.
So we built it.
Introducing the Teacher FastTrack
The Teacher FastTrack is an expertly designed, locally driven and transformation focused learning experience for your Teachers like nothing you’ve seen before. We’re taking the best of the Flipped Learning approach and applying it to the fundamental task of supporting Teachers to improve practice at the coalface.
We could go on … and on … and on, because there’s so much packed into the Teacher FastTrack. But how about this – click this link to our dedicated Teacher FastTrack webpage only if the following interests you:
* 10 Modules specifically targeting the most critical challenges of today’s classroom Teacher.
* An entry interview to determine strengths and practice challenges.
* A video focus to facilitate participant access at the time, pace and depth that suits them.
* A local mentor in your school to assist and monitor progress.
* Reflection questions on each module to contextualise the content.
* Supporting downloadable resources with every module.
* Two individual coaching sessions for each participant with a subject matter expert.
* And a whole bunch of resources provided to your whole school throughout the 12 Month commitment.
Yes – this is the weblink to that webpage – if we have your attention of course.
On the webpage, you’ll find:
* A 5 minute video unpacking the whole Teacher FastTrack Program.
* A Prospectus for you to download.
* An online form to fill in for any interested Participant. Relax, we’ll take everything from there. Yep – everything!
So, what will it take for Teacher Practice to be prioritised in your school in 2015? Or did we just answer that question together?