Seeking professional learning

The teacher explains the importance of ongoing professional learning to her development as a teacher. She describes the additional training and development she undertook as a graduate teacher at university and how that more fully prepared her for her first year of teaching. In her current school, she takes advantage of a mentoring relationship with another teacher, which involves weekly, and or fortnightly meetings to discuss teaching approaches and strategies. She also is able to view her mentor’s classes.

The teacher is an English-Spanish teacher in an Adelaide specialist language school with over 1200 students in years 8 to 12. The school is committed to high academic achievement and is also determined to meet the needs of its culturally diverse students. Fifty per cent of the students at the school have a language background other than English. The school has a policy of supporting teachers new to teaching through providing mentoring support.