Teachers continually improve their professional knowledge and practice.

Element 6: Teachers continually improve their professional knowledge and practice.
Statement/ Annotation
I believe in order to be an effective teacher, one must always reflect on their own practice. Reflecting on one’s own practice encourages criticism of your practice, evaluating strategies which work well in the classroom and ones which don’t, identifying problems and creating solutions. I believe that ‘valuing and respecting every student, and being committed to working continually and improving one’s own practice (Titone, 2005) is the key to being an effective teacher and continually improving ones professional knowledge and practice.
I have critically reflected on my Visual Arts lessons in order to improve my teaching practice 6.1.1 and accept constructive feedback in order to improve and refine my teaching and learning practices (6.1.5), in doing this I have demonstrated knowledge and understood the importance of teamwork in an educational context through my colleagues and the schooling community (6.1.4).
How my evidence supports the specific principles of the QTF:
Using the quality teaching framework to reflect on and analyse my teaching practice
Applying constructive feedback from cooperating teachers to improve and refine teaching and learning practices
Using the Quality Teaching Framework as a tool to evaluate personal achievement of the professional standards and to identify professional learning needs.
Collaborative lesson planning, observation and assessment
Element 7: Teachers are actively engaged members of their profession and the wider community
Statement/ Annotation
I believe that a relationship between the school, family and the wider community is essential to a student’s academic progression. I feel promoting home-school connections and having an understanding of student’s background creates a learning environment conducive to student achievement and demonstrates the importance of effective home-school links and processes for reporting student progress to parents and caregivers (7.1.2). I believe that when the school and the community work together, it is not only the students learning experience that will be enhanced, but also that of their family and teachers (Streelasky, 2008)
I have participated with the wider community and attended the school athletics carnival where I assisted on the track events. This commitment demonstrated my engagement with other faculties and encouraging students who I did not teach whilst on my placement. This has established my ability to work effectively with external professionals, teachers’ aides and community based personnel to enhance student learning opportunities (7.1.4)
How my evidence supports the specific principles of the QTF:
Demonstrate strong, positive support for learning and mutual respect in all communications with parents and caregivers (SS)
Interacting effectively with external professionals and teachers to enhance student learning opportunities (SS) (C)
Where appropriate, include members of the community from diverse cultural backgrounds in learning activities to bring alive the learning of the lesson (N) (CK)