Oh what a YEAR!

Oh What A YEAR!

As I sit down to write this blog I can’t believe I have been teaching at St Luke’s for a whole year. In one sense I feel like I have blinked and it’s already over. In another sense I feel like I have been here forever and, to quote my teaching partner, ‘it feels like we’re part of the furniture.’

Recently, during a tour for the new St Luke’s 2019 teaching staff, my principal Greg Miller put a few of us on the spot and asked us to reveal our greatest joy and our greatest challenge from the year that was. As I was listening to my fellow stage 1 teachers reveal their answers I was racking my brain trying to think of a logical and coherent response…

Although there have been so many joys and challenges during my time at St Luke’s one of the greatest challenges I faced turned out to also be one of my greatest joys.

This year I was placed on Stage 1 with three other, incredibly talented, teachers. We were all new to St Luke’s and Emma and I were new to the Parramatta Diocese. Being a beginning teacher, only in my third year of teaching, I was freaking out! I can honestly say that Term 1 this year was the hardest term of my, albeit very short, teaching career. At the start of the year the focus for our liturgy was “into the deep”. We were definitely headed into deep waters and not only did I feel like I was drowning but sinking! Greg is often quoted as saying that we are trying to build the plane whilst flying it. Well during that term I felt like the plane was on fire, falling to bits, crashing to the earth and I was barely holding on. Ok so that may be a bit dramatic… But hopefully it proves a point as to how overwhelmed I was feeling.

Although term 1 was my greatest challenge it also led to the realisation of my greatest joy. Even though I felt like I was drowning, I had a team who were drowning with me. This doesn’t sound very joyous… but it was! I knew that, sink or swim, we were in it together. We leaned on each other and made it through. Each term that followed became increasingly easier, bring new and exciting challenges. I had to reprogram my mindset, accept the risk of failure and just dive head first into the deep.

Along with my team I had the support of learning coaches who helped me evaluate and develop my teaching practice. At St Luke’s we call it a Professional Analysis Conversation or PAC. At the start of the year the thought of being ‘observed’ for a lesson was very daunting! Now it is part of regular practice. It is not so much about the observation but about the co-reflection after it. Having the opportunity to receive constructive feedback and generate new ideas has been so rewarding. So much so that I would continuously email asking when my next PAC could be. This was and continues to be another great joy as part of my professional development at St Luke’s.

I also had the support of Greg, a principal who gave us permission to take risks and try new things. He is credited to saying “If it doesn’t cause harm, or cost too much, than our default answer is and should always be ‘yes’.” As a stage we were continuously trying something new. Did they all work? No. But what was important was that we learned from those experiences and continued to challenge ourselves as educators to strive to provide the best education for our students, our number one priority.

I know that I could not survived this year without the amazing team of educators and support staff that make up our St Luke’s Community. I have learnt and grown so much as an educator and I am so excited to continue my journey in 2019. Bring on another year of challenges, growth and joy!

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