Activity 5 - Professional context crossing boundaries and creating connections.

Within education there are many agencies that directly and indirectly affect me as a professional. The web can continue to grow to as wide as you would like. But for the purpose of this assignment I restricted to my immediate agencies that I have been in contacted with over the last year.

From school there are direct agencies the effect what we teach and how we teach it. These are Ministry of Education and the not so queen bee (Hekia Parata) who has no educational background at all. They tell us what to teach through the New Zealand Curriculum Document of 2007. From there they directly link to Education Review Office (ERO) who visit school every 1-7 years and grade them on how effective they are in the community. They report back to MOE, who then reports to the Prime Minister and sends our data to be ranked against the word. ERO work with the principals of the school who then shares finding with the teachers and Board of Trustees. The next learning steps are put in place and this links to outside agencies to provide Professional Development. This has been Core Education this year and they directly come from the Ministry of Education too.

Well there are many links there and they all revert back to the Ministry of Education. This impacts my practice as ERO tells my principal how we are going and what we need to work on. They identify strengths that could be teachers or we could be the weakness. This effects how I teach. The National standards then tell me how I need to teach to get my children to the standard. This makes me plan lessons that will capture the heart of the kids.

As educators we always need to be aware of how we talk and who we talk to when discussing education. As you never know who others work for with so many agencies interlinked. Teachers that I am linked to also affect my teaching practice. Their challenges and experiences help to shape my next steps. Having a time to reflect and discuss community kids is a benefit and my next steps/goals would be to set up a monthly cluster coffee club.

The NZ Teachers Facebook page is a huge benefit to the profession. The collaboration there is amazing and you discuss issues and share ideas from all around New Zealand. Being able to tap into knowledge of teachers with a range of experiences is a huge benefit for all involved. This benefits children's lives and is a great example of professionals working alongside each other in more of a interdisciplinary online environment.