Activity 1 - Introduction

Welcome from Peter

I am a year 5/6 teacher working in a city school in Wellington and I am currently taking the Post Graduate Certificate in Applied Practice. This blog is where I will be reflecting on my practice for the Applied Practice in Context component of the course.

I started teaching in 2004 after having a successful career in the IT industry.  I have worked in a few Wellington Schools and at the moment I am Senior Syndicate Leader at Kilbirnie School.

Since starting the course I feel my teaching style has changed significantly. At the moment I am working on developing an Independent Learning environment in my class. This has been possible due to a number of factors, the school has purchased 1:2 devices for 2 of the senior classes. The senior management are supportive of moving to independent learning and there are a number of teachers in the school with a similar viewpoint so there is support within the school for these changes. It has been a very exciting journey so far, one of constant flux for both myself and the students. I feel that the class has become far more vibrant, lots of different activities going on, students working on their own passions. What is really exciting is the engagement, bells are becoming a thing of the past as students start activities when they get in, through the breaks and some have to be pushed out the door at the end of the day.

Over the past few years blogs have been a focus at our school, but to be quite honest they are not something that I have been particularly successful with. So this will be an interesting experience for me.  I firmly believe that the future of teaching will require reflective blogs or other types of media to allow us to develop our practice so I am looking forward to developing the skills required to succeed in this skill.