School-+Eaglehawk+Secondary+College

=**EAGLEHAWK SECONDARY COLLEGE**=

Eaglehawk Secondary College is located in Bendigo, Victoria. We are currently half way through redevelopment, with 2 new learning communities and a performing arts centre completed and operational and two more communities, a gymnasium and administration block still to come (hopefully by end of this year). We're a school of 600 students in years 7-10. A large number of our students are recipients of EMA. Eaglehawk, although a part of Bendigo, has historically been seen as a seperate community and as such the school has close ties to the local community. A number of our students are bussed in from surrounding country areas. About 5% of our students are Indigenous and this number is expected to grow as programs such as our Indigenous Studies class and the Wannik Dance Academy become established at the school.

Julie Sturges (participant 1) is English KLA Coordinator and the school's Literacy Coordinator. She teaches year 9 and 10 English and VCE Literature. Julie has never been a coach but obviously in her role as KLA leader she mentors and guides many staff on all Literacy matters.

Cecile Shanahan (participant 2) is a year 8 English teacher, Media Studies and Indigenous Studies teacher. She also coordinates the literacy and numeracy tutoring for all the Inidgenous students in the school. This is the first year in Cecile's teaching career (8 years) that she has not had some form of hands on literacy support role with students. Cecile has never coached but is being coached this year by a regionally appointed coach.

Hi Julie and Cecile, I enjoyed reading a little more about your context. During our Professional learning sessions there isn't the space to find out too much about each other so I think this wiki space can serve us well in that regard. Joan will be visiting you soon and I am sure that you will have plenty to share with her as you both negotiate the new parts of your roles. What has challenged your thinking most during our PL days and how has that made a difference to your work?

Hi, Cecile here. Looking forward to Joan's visit tomorrow although I'm not sure I am as far along with my plan as I'd like! I'm about to do some reading back over my notes from the PL days in order to prepare for our discussions...I need to refresh my memory a little!

Cecile again - Joan's visit was a great. It was really beneficial to talk with our principal about her visions for us in relation to coaching, both this year and beyond. Joan was really able to help us to determine very clear and concise goals and objectives. I think I can say we've both come away with renewed excitement about our plans. Personally I'm really looking forward to: a PD at my school on the first day back of term 3 run by Cathy Toll (Julie's on long service so unfortunately she'll miss out); the chance of putting some of my plan into action - I've decided to focus on coaching the tutors who work with our indigenous students and also some of my own pupils from a year 8 English class; the next two days of 'training' and of course Joan's next visit.

//31.7.10: Cecile touching base again - just wanting to share some thoughts about the coaching conversation that Cathy Toll and I "demonstrated" at Thursday's session...Cathy did an amazing job of helping me to clarify my thoughts given how many I had floating around in my head as we spoke!!! In hindsight, it probably would have been beneficial to give her some 'smaller' problems to help me nut out but, I guess the problems I raised may be ones other teachers are faced with and so it was an example of what a coaching conversation could look like, after all. I'll be interested to watch the video back to see how Cathy's guided questions really steered the conversation along until a goal could be set. One thing's for sure I'm very grateful for the opportunity to have had the "talk" with Cathy though I'm a little surprised at myself for revealing so much about my teaching insecurities!!!//

//Hi Cecile - Maureen here. It was such a privilege to all of us that you were willing to share your struggles - and exactly what many coaches will face when they start a conversation with their colleagues. Would you like a copy of the whole talk just for you? We will also edit some snippets but will check with you before we share with anyone. I was at an appreciative inquiry workshop last year and we had to craft a positive vision - mine was 'inspired, courageous learners'. For me, you were that courageous learner last week - I look forward to hearing more about what you decide after talking to Joan this week.//

9/9/10 - Just trying to gather my thoughts in relation to how I structure my 'evidence of learning' for the last day. I have to be careful not to attempt too much... How do I show that I am a much more skilled literacy teacher now, than I was at the beginning of this year? How can I show that my students have benefited from my improved teaching practice? Establishing coaching in our school will not be the result of my experiences this year - is this a problem/issue? I've been inspired by day 6's session on Multiliteracies and Multimodal texts (Inanimate Alice) to develop an English unit for my year 8s (and hope it will be used by others in our school/region afterwards). I've had conversations with a colleague on curriculum planning using Esther's suggestions, assessment as, for and of learning and shared some professional readings with her. We'll meet again after the holidays to discuss the readings further and share some more ideas. I've played around with some mapping tools for staff and students but am not happy with what I've created thus far! I'm enjoying some of the readings that have been recommended to us through this wiki or at the workshops. I wish I had more time to explore everything thoroughly!!! I'd also like to watch my coaching conversation with Cathy again...must talk to someone about that. -Cecile

From Maureen: Hi Cecile - it may be that the main impact of the program for you has been in the content areas of Literacy Teaching and Literacy Learning, because that was your learning priority. Also, it sounds like you are tackling some of the broader elements of professional learning on the STAR diagram, such as professional reading, substantive conversations, raising consciousness and testing new ideas with your class. If you are able to provide some evidence in relation to your two questions above - how you are a more skilled literacy teacher and how your students have benefitted from your improved teaching practice, then that is a very legitimate impact of your actions. I would not expect that people were able to take action in more than two main content areas this year - far better to delve deeper into one area than do a surface sweep of them all.

Cecile here again...Here is the work I used to help provide my evidence of impact and other useful tid bits... The Monitoring Behaviours checklist has a video that accompanies it but I do not have the necessary permissions from students to provide a link to it here.