Communities of Practice

Community of Practice (Week 25 APC - Reflective Practice)

My professional community of practice knows me as Whaea Rochelle, I am a classroom teacher.  I have taught 5 year olds for many years now.  I consider myself fortunate to team teach with a highly experienced teacher who challenges my thinking on a daily and at times, hourly basis.  

I wear many hats that overlap in different ways Wenger (2000) sees this as being boundaries that are fluid.

I am firstly a classroom teacher, I also hold to role of Year One Team Leader, our team is diverse with teachers at various stages in their teaching career.  I have recently started in the role of Junior SENCo.  I am also staff representative to the Board of Trustees.  All of these leadership roles I have taken on mean that my community of practice foundation continues to grow and evolve.  I am surrounded by people who want to provide great educational opportunities for learners.

A new community of practice I have joined is Mindlab this community has strengthened my leadership and classroom practice and has created new “learning loops” (Wenger 2000) for me to explore.

I believe that the purpose and function of my practice in creating lifelong learners is to develop relationships with my students and their whanau as they begin their journey into more formal education.  Developing, maintaining and managing relationships with other professionals both within my workplace and from outside agencies is another function of my practice.  This takes a lot of time and adds considerably to my workload, creating meetings most days and during release time.  The benefits of investing this time early on pay great dividends when our team works with great synergy and efficiently.

In the community of practice I work within there are many different forms of participation.  Wenger (2000) talks about elements within communities of “events, leadership, connectivity, membership, learning projects and artifacts.”  While I contribute to aspects of all of these elements I specifically contribute to leadership with the Team leader role and SENCo roles I hold. I facilitate professional learning, lead team discussions and data analysis and ensure the pastoral care needs of my team are met.  This is only the tip of the iceberg that is 'my job'.   

Relationships and whanaungatanga is one of our school's core values and this as a New Entrant teacher it is at the forefront of all that I do. I work hard to ensure students have a great start at our school as I believe that this can help to set them up in their learning journey for life.  It is often parents that I find the hardest to engage for many different reasons.  One of the main ones is that their view of school is based on their own experiences and many of them seem to be negative.  A crucial role I play is to break down those barriers and engage parents in all aspects of their child’s learning.  One way I work towards this is by chatting with parents before and after school getting to know them and sharing my own experiences with my children to make connections and strengthen relationships. Many parents comment that school is not like it use to be for them and how open and inviting school is now.  When I hear comments like that I know that I am succeeding.

References

Wenger, E. (2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems.Organization, 7(2), 225-246.