A big step for me professionally has taken place in the past few weeks in relation to seeking accreditation in NSW as a teacher at Proficient Level. I have submitted my samples to my current school for the writing up of the accreditation report.
It has been a year since I looked at my progress and since then, really was in a sense just about ready to present that evidence to a school, and just noting that I had found. I think that time last year came to be really handy because it has made everything much easier. I was able to approach my school, show the samples (and that they had signed off) and it was fixed.
I was able to provide some additional samples of evidence in recent months and also have my practice observed by an experienced teacher.
Hopefully the next entry on this topic will be about gaining the proficient level and giving credit to those involved in my journey there. So far a big thankyou to each and everyone of them.
Some Teacher Librarians may be finding it daunting to collect evidence, but really it is easy to collect. If you teach a lesson (especially primary school), keep a lesson plan, keep copies of sheets or handouts, newsletter articles (communication with the school community), professional learning diaries or samples of student work. Even minutes of a meeting you might have with your library team, faculty or colleague will count. Ideas are endless.
What about classroom management or student discipline? Create a discipline policy that you apply for the library that you work in. Casual or temp? Make a generic one and mention that it is adapted to all schools that you work at. Your teacher observation will also be handy here too like it has been done with me.
Make sure that you look at the standards and make sure that the samples will allow you to meet them all.
A big tip from me is to annotate your samples which you can do with Adobe Acrobat where you can show where the standards have been met and will guide your mentor or TAA in finalising your report.
With your annotations with your samples, go to some detail because it will make a difference as well. It will help you too in determining whether or not you have met the standards.
If you are stuck on doing it from a Teacher Librarians perspective, feel free to get in touch with me or speak to your TAA.
