Tanya Campbell @one_schoolroom · Oct 18

I think these types of initiatives are really important.

Tanya Campbell plans to blog all of her French lessons. Putting her classes out there for teachers to at least lurk in or better still, learn from and collaborate.

I have already learned that there are eleven types of French-Canadian!

I was reviewing the slides (here) from Professor John MacBeath presentation, to school-leaders in Dublin, recently. The topic was “International perspectives on school self evaluation.”

I liked the slide which was entitled “How do teachers learn?”

MacBeaths response was

• Peer observation
• —Lesson study
• —Co-teaching
• Mentoring, coaching and critical friendship
• —Learning from and with students
• —Collaborative lesson planning
• —Learning conversations
• —Sharing and discussing students’ work
• —Structured practice-focused meetings
• —Learning walls

A lot of the reaction to Twitter about my previous post on Continuing Professional Development was on lack of resources, time and money .

They are very important but even more important is the passion that a teacher brings to his / herself-understanding as an educational professional and how they can continue to do their professional best for themselves and their students.

This requires an attitude, an openness and a professional drive. There is an element of self and peer initiative around the classic action research type question – how can I improve and continue to improve practice here in my classroom?

How to begin? I like MacBeaths two points about Sharing and Discussing Students Work and Structured Practice-Focused meetings.

They can I think, with a little creative thinking and support by school management and leaders of learning within a school, be embedded within existing subject planing / subject meeting structures.

Just some thoughts!

Written by Donal O’ Mahony