Sandra Cultrera
Primary School Teacher
7. Engage Professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community
Professional engagement with staff as well as parents, caregivers and the local community allow for relationships to form that will promote communication, understanding, support and rapport which will in turn promote the health and wellbeing of students and the school community.
I have had great experience in collaborating and seeking professional advice from my colleagues and professionals in education to improve my teaching and learning practice. Through collaboration comes strength, consistency of teaching and learning throughout year levels and deeper thinking, which is what I have experienced through bi weekly Professional Learning Team meetings, Contemporary learning forums and junior team planning meetings.
​I have sat through and participated in the beginning of the year parent teacher interviews at Sacred Heart Primary for grade 5 and 6. This experience enhanced my relationships with students within the class that I had been teaching for the previous three weeks, but also created new relationships with parents and caregivers. The two nights of interviews allowed me to make connections between the child, home and school, and also confirmed observations that I had made in regards to students values and attitudes within class time.

These interviews for grade 5 and 6 centered around parents expectations of students for first term, upcoming projects and their beginning of year assessment results. I was able to give feedback and respond to parents questions, and was able to listen to some of the children's interpretations of school and classroom practice through the parents response which was extremely insightful, especially as some of the students resist telling us as educators certain feelings about anything conducted within the classroom. Therefore I discovered that parent teacher interviews are extremely useful for:

Parent, Teacher and Student Interviews (graduate year)
- Creating relationships with parents and caregivers
- Building rapport and trust within these relationships
- Gain insightful information about students likes, dislikes and interests
- Develop understanding about the values and attitudes of the parents, caregivers and children which can impact on learning
- Opportunity for both teachers, parents and students to ask questions or respond to concerns
- Offer support
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​Catholic Education Department- Anne Speakman Seminars
Anne Speakman from the Catholic Education Department is involved in Sacred Heart Primary schools efforts in connecting family and school in order to create healthy and constructive partnerships in order to enhance quality teaching and create safe learning environments with teachers, students, parents and caregivers. For me as a teacher, this involves understanding the child's socio-cultural backgrounds or 'virtual schoolbags' in order to understand their family background and all that they maybe bringing with them to school, whether that be positive, negative, physical, social, emotional or intellectual. The foundations of this practice is not only forming relationships with students, but building rapport and relationships with parents also.
The two seminars that I participated in centred around dealing with difficult parents and situations that parents may present to a teacher, and how best a teacher can respond parents that promotes family and school positive partnerships. This involved role playing as parent and teacher and listing possible strategies that influenced parent and teacher interaction when confronted with difficult scenarios. Some of these strategies that I felt were extremely useful and I that I had practiced in the session and in my Social Welfare Unit, Advanced Counseling were:

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Reflective listening
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Empathetic listening/Empathy
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Use of silence
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Clarifying the parent/caregiver's feelings
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Reducing Inequity by making clear that they are the expert of their child
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Re-framing a negative situation
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​​Choosing an appropriate time and place
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Have another teacher stand by if necessary for support
I now see the parents on a regular basic in the morning and during after school pick up where I can simply smile and say hello, or have a friendly chat. It feels rewarding to know that parents and caregivers respond to my presence and view me as a kind and approachable addition to the school community.
My review of a potential school resource: cyber sexual development
My Principal, Rod Hayes, in my fourth year practicum year gave me the opportunity to analyse and evaluate a potential resource that the school was considering using as part of sexual education for the senior years. My task was to decide whether the resource was more or less a secondary school resource or a primary school resource. This resource was called 'Sexting' information pack which contained definitions of cyber sexual development, various avenues, including mobile phones, that cyber sexual harassment can be committed, strategies for young people to use and stay safe when using technology such as the internet and various social media sites, teachers guide for implementation, and information about laws that protect against sexual harassment.
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Whilst reviewing this resource, I took into the consideration the demographics of my grade 5 and 6 classroom in particular as I had been directly teaching and developing relationships with each of them. This allowed me to connect this resource to them and how best to utilize this as a teacher. My initial thoughts were that the information pack was focused on a secondary cohort. However, as I had completed a unit during my studies called Health Initiatives, all the extensive research that has been focused on the area of sexual education in primary schools in today's current technological society calls for early awareness through education of the risks of cyber sexual behaviour.

I drew from this research the evidence to suggest that keeping children aware of the risks and activity that can occur during interaction with social media and mobile phones, also keeps them safe. Senior primary students are entering secondary contexts where they will be exposed to a whole new demographic of students, and in the near future in regards to the Australian Curriculum, classroom teachers will required to address sexual education and cyber sexual development. Therefore I found the resource to one of value for teacher education and my review was passed on to all senior teachers and librarian.
Seeking professional collaboration
During my first year of teaching, I identified a need within my classroom of diverse learners. This was extending higher achieving students within mathematics. My evidence of this was that they were six months ahead in both their MAI (Maths Assessment Interview) data and their previous year report. The students that fell into this category were both grade 1 and 2 students whom I begun doing guided mathematics sessions with, however I felt I needed more professional development within this area.
I sought the assistance of our EMU support teacher and my mentor teacher whom was a maths specialist at her previous school. Both of these colleagues made me aware of recognising and going back to AusVELS progression point standards and looking at the next year level to gain ideas into the student’s future learning and how to build the foundations for this.
They also showed me very simple but effective ways to differentiate mathematics for these higher achieving students, in particular within multiplication and division. This then became my inquiry question for my VIT (Victorian Institute of Teaching) investigation.
Carol Levesy from the Catholic Education Office in Warrugul, Victoria was able to come to our school to give us as a staff other strategies for consolidating mathematical awareness and going from the concrete to abstract thinking with mathematics. From this, one of the greatest understandings from making the transition from the concrete to the abstract was drawing and making visual representations of different mathematical concepts. This was something that I got my grade 1/2 class to do using the maths thinking tool the ‘Thinkboard’ when solving multiplication questions.
Collaboration with Learning Support Officers/Integration Aides and the use of ILP's (Individual Learning Plans)
In my experience as a graduate teacher, I have had ongoing expereince with children who have special needs. I have planned and implemented differntaited learning tasks with the colaboration from a LSO, particularly when having her full time within the classroom. This was particularly important when updating student's individual learning plans and collaborating with the student about their goals for each term. This was always followed by a Parent Support Group meeting between LSO, teacher and student as to what our goal was and the strategies we were implementing for the student to achieve this goal/s.