A Pre-Service Teacher's Experience
getting down and dirty - pre-school children learn through outdoor play
Welcome...
My name is Natasha Godfrey, and this is my teaching journey.
This site is essentially a portfolio of my developing notion of being a teacher - as I come to terms with the title, whilst still feeling as though I am the one being taught so much myself. It is a work-in-progress, under constant construction, abolition, revamping and reconstruction as my own ideas and principles around teaching and learning are doing the same. I don't believe I will ever stop learning myself, but the person I am becoming is someone who will have the opportunity to pass on a love of learning to our most precious source of hope - our children. Follow the links to my ever-evolving teaching philosophy, to my meeting of Graduate Standards for Teachers, as laid out by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, and to my progressive, reflective journey as I become a teacher.
My actual placement experience began in October, 2012, for the forth and final term of the school year. This first placement was with a combined Grade 1 and 2 class, in a low socioeconomic pocket of Darwin. This was a truly challenging, enlightening and rewarding four weeks (or twenty days, combining the practicum for two units of work - ETP410 and ETP420). It took me to where I moved up to the Northern Territory to find myself. I worked in a school in which the student cohort is 52% Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent, and many more from refugee and other socially disadvantaged backgrounds, as determined in socioeconomic status and wellbeing outcomes. I gained so much insight into developing teaching habits and overcoming the basics to even begin to push into realms of more difficult academic engagement and outcome. My diary entries will elicit some of my experiences here.
My experience since 2013 has taken me back to Melbourne, home to me, beginning with further pre-service teaching in an amazingly developed and innovative primary school, teaching Grade 3 and 4, combined. The contrast in learning has been profound as I have continued my pre-service, my voluntary and my casual relief teaching journey; comparing the stark differences in my teaching from one social demographic to another. But each new position I have held as a teacher has had its challenges and rewards, and I am feeling increasingly confident and capable in the teaching role each day that passes.
My reflections from my final placement in 2013:
I really love working with these students, and alongside my mentor and other staff of the school, and am overcome by the satisfaction I feel in having found my place in the world I am so passionate to make a difference in. In total, this placement will be 10 weeks, with some days missed for Curriculum and Public Holiday days, but seeing my students through the whole of term 2. It was planned to be the last of my mainstream practicum before I headed back up North and into Arnhem Land for a final few weeks within an isolated Aboriginal community, where my health promoting background and passion for making a difference would surely soar. I have a passion to learn as much as possible about cultural learning differences and ways to incorporate difference into my teaching, underpinned by my passion in Indigenous health promotion (my prior degree's focus) and holistic education. However, inability to secure a remote placement meant I stayed on in Melbourne for my final rounds, and completed a practicum in the role of a PE teacher, incorporating my fitness and health promotion backgrounds into my teaching here.
What a year it has and continues to be. Here I will share moments of my teaching experience with you through my addressing of the graduate standards as laid out by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL, http://www.teacherstandards.aitsl.edu.au/CareerStage/GraduateTeachers).
Please Note: Throughout the Standards that are divided across the pages in this website, I have included photographs and pictures to illustrate evidence for having met criteria of the AITSL. All pictures containing children have had parental permission granted, as established through take-home notices and parental slips to be returned to both Manunda Terrace and Westgarth Primary Schools. Where pictures or files have been included to further the evidence I have provided for a standard, or substandard, I have indicated this using **grey fine-print**. Just scroll directly to bottom of the page in view to find this example image/file.
In addition, all blue quotes are those that I have been given by my mentors or other overseeing teachers and professionals, whilst my own personal reflections, mostly taken from my daily diary entries, appear throughout the website in purple.
Where I have quoted directly, I offer in-text citations or direct links to references in yellow or green. I have a reference list as the final page of my website.
I hope that makes it easier to navigate!
My name is Natasha Godfrey, and this is my teaching journey.
This site is essentially a portfolio of my developing notion of being a teacher - as I come to terms with the title, whilst still feeling as though I am the one being taught so much myself. It is a work-in-progress, under constant construction, abolition, revamping and reconstruction as my own ideas and principles around teaching and learning are doing the same. I don't believe I will ever stop learning myself, but the person I am becoming is someone who will have the opportunity to pass on a love of learning to our most precious source of hope - our children. Follow the links to my ever-evolving teaching philosophy, to my meeting of Graduate Standards for Teachers, as laid out by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, and to my progressive, reflective journey as I become a teacher.
My actual placement experience began in October, 2012, for the forth and final term of the school year. This first placement was with a combined Grade 1 and 2 class, in a low socioeconomic pocket of Darwin. This was a truly challenging, enlightening and rewarding four weeks (or twenty days, combining the practicum for two units of work - ETP410 and ETP420). It took me to where I moved up to the Northern Territory to find myself. I worked in a school in which the student cohort is 52% Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent, and many more from refugee and other socially disadvantaged backgrounds, as determined in socioeconomic status and wellbeing outcomes. I gained so much insight into developing teaching habits and overcoming the basics to even begin to push into realms of more difficult academic engagement and outcome. My diary entries will elicit some of my experiences here.
My experience since 2013 has taken me back to Melbourne, home to me, beginning with further pre-service teaching in an amazingly developed and innovative primary school, teaching Grade 3 and 4, combined. The contrast in learning has been profound as I have continued my pre-service, my voluntary and my casual relief teaching journey; comparing the stark differences in my teaching from one social demographic to another. But each new position I have held as a teacher has had its challenges and rewards, and I am feeling increasingly confident and capable in the teaching role each day that passes.
My reflections from my final placement in 2013:
I really love working with these students, and alongside my mentor and other staff of the school, and am overcome by the satisfaction I feel in having found my place in the world I am so passionate to make a difference in. In total, this placement will be 10 weeks, with some days missed for Curriculum and Public Holiday days, but seeing my students through the whole of term 2. It was planned to be the last of my mainstream practicum before I headed back up North and into Arnhem Land for a final few weeks within an isolated Aboriginal community, where my health promoting background and passion for making a difference would surely soar. I have a passion to learn as much as possible about cultural learning differences and ways to incorporate difference into my teaching, underpinned by my passion in Indigenous health promotion (my prior degree's focus) and holistic education. However, inability to secure a remote placement meant I stayed on in Melbourne for my final rounds, and completed a practicum in the role of a PE teacher, incorporating my fitness and health promotion backgrounds into my teaching here.
What a year it has and continues to be. Here I will share moments of my teaching experience with you through my addressing of the graduate standards as laid out by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL, http://www.teacherstandards.aitsl.edu.au/CareerStage/GraduateTeachers).
Please Note: Throughout the Standards that are divided across the pages in this website, I have included photographs and pictures to illustrate evidence for having met criteria of the AITSL. All pictures containing children have had parental permission granted, as established through take-home notices and parental slips to be returned to both Manunda Terrace and Westgarth Primary Schools. Where pictures or files have been included to further the evidence I have provided for a standard, or substandard, I have indicated this using **grey fine-print**. Just scroll directly to bottom of the page in view to find this example image/file.
In addition, all blue quotes are those that I have been given by my mentors or other overseeing teachers and professionals, whilst my own personal reflections, mostly taken from my daily diary entries, appear throughout the website in purple.
Where I have quoted directly, I offer in-text citations or direct links to references in yellow or green. I have a reference list as the final page of my website.
I hope that makes it easier to navigate!