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Wilderness Times | Autumn 2021
LEARNING WITH AND FROM EACH OTHER:
PROFESSIONAL COLLABORATION AT WILDERNESS As Wilderness girls leave through the School gates at the end of the day on each Monday, Wilderness teachers gather together from 3.40 – 5.00pm to learn with and from each other. Introduced at the beginning of this year, the collaboration recognises the importance of dedicated time for teachers to work with each other to continuously improve student learning and progress their professional knowledge and understanding. At the heart of this program lies the philosophy of professional collaboration as defined by Rick Du Four, whereby collaboration is seen as ‘a systematic process in which we work together, interdependently, to analyse and impact professional practice in order to improve our individual and collective practice in order to improve our individual and collective results’. Professional Collaboration is designed to realise part of the Wilderness School Strategic Plan (2020-2022):
“By designing and delivering high quality professional learning, we will enrich our teachers’ capacity to apply deep pedagogical and disciplinary knowledge in flexible and innovative ways.” In Term 1, Junior School teachers have primarily focused on Mathematics. They have met twice with Mathematics expert educator and academic, Di Siemon, via
Zoom, to deepen their knowledge and understanding of Di’s ground breaking research into what she calls ‘The Big Ideas in Number’: ideas, strategies, or ways of thinking about some key aspect of mathematics, without which students’ progress in mathematics will be seriously impacted. To date, Wilderness teachers have engaged in an in-depth study of the first ‘big idea’: trusting the count. This refers to students’ capacity to have access to a range of mental objects for each of the numbers to ten, which can be used flexibly without having to make, count or see these collections physically. Junior School teachers used the tools Di has developed to expose students’ thinking about their mathematics. This enables them to identify where students may have misunderstandings and then implement strategies targeted at supporting girls to develop the understandings they need to progress further in their Mathematics’ learning. The Middle and Senior School focus has been the Curriculum Review and Renewal process introduced in the middle of 2020. This work aims to deepen disciplinary knowledge while also building a shared understanding of what really matters in each subject. From the development of an Essence Statement in each subject discipline, teachers interrogated current curriculum and units of learning to ensure that the units are aligned with the Essence. They have then designed or adapted existing curriculum and redesigned common assessment tasks in each year level. Other activities have included moderation of student learning and rubric writing.
While acknowledging the demands of this initiative, Wilderness teachers have unanimously endorsed the benefits of this professional collaboration. Their feedback has included comments such as: ‘I have grown professionally by being able to focus on learning that has been specifically tailored to my needs and the needs of my colleagues. Working with my colleagues has allowed me to learn from their expertise.’ ‘With a clear structure and intention to each session, these programs have been valuable in strengthening our faculty and building positive and productive relationships. We have also managed to have challenging conversations and engage in appropriate dialogue and discussion to reach decisions and reflect on practice.’ ‘It has been highly professionally beneficial for new staff and existing staff to collaborate on a shared vision for our curriculum… We are continuing to achieve our goals, but it has provided time for us to not only document and plan, but also share and review progressively as we have implemented changes.’ ‘Mondays after school are my new favourite time of the week.’ Heather De Blasio Director of Learning and Teaching Excellence Reference List: DuFour, R., DuFour, R., Eaker, R., Many, T., Mattos, M., Grift, G., & Sloper, C. (2017). Learning by doing: A handbook for professional communities at work (3rd ed.). Hawker Brownlow Education.
