Supporting beginning teachers

A beginning teacher's professional learning is very important. In a study by Denis Rose (1994), it was found that "regardles of the perceived quality of pre-service experience, if the teacher was not immersed in a culture of ongoing professional development once they began teaching in schools, within 3-5 years they would revert to teaching in ways that they remember being taught".

With this in mind I have developed a Ning site for beginning teachers. Please join up if you are a beginning teacher, or you may want to pass this on if work with/are responsible for newly graduating teachers. This network can be used for support, sharing of the great ideas, questions and the wonderful experiences that beginning teachers have.

http://newteacher.ning.com/

ref:
Rose, D. (1994); The effect of practice on the acquisition and maintenance of teaching skills : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Canterbury

Social inquiry- using Youtube to understand values.

One aspect of learning in social studies in New Zealand, is students carrying out inquiries that include looking at people's values. A relevant topic for this is boy racers- young men in cars who like to race and do burnouts in the cities on Friday and Saturday nights. In the past we have got students to ascertain the different values by reading newspaper articles. Today, the boy racers themselves are developing classroom resources through Youtube. Watching the attached video students should be able to clearly identify boyracer values from a boyracer source.
A bit of a dilemma may be that some of the students may become boyracers as a result of this!!!