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Leading learning through developing the capacity of teaching assistants
Celine McKinley shares the results of a course designed to enhance classroom contributions
As a class teacher and newly appointed Year Team Leader at the British School Jakarta I was fortunate enough to take part in the International Leadership and Management Programme (ILMP), which is designed to offer professional development for practitioners and to improve student learning in schools. For the past few years, British School Jakarta has chosen to implement this bespoke ILMP course that includes coaching on specific leadership projects. The ILMP programmes are based on current research combined with evidence and collective experience. They have been designed to impact on learning by improving knowledge, skills and understanding of school leadership and management. The focus of school leadership should be learning, which is its core business. “School leadership is second only to classroom instruction among all school-related factors that contribute to what students learn at school. While evidence about leadership effects on student learning can be confusing to interpret, much of the existing research actually underestimates its effects. Total (direct and indirect) effects of leadership on student learning account for about one quarter of the total school effects”. (Leithwood, 2004)
Being new to the role of Year Team Leader, I was keen to lead a team in a positive way that enabled us to achieve improved outcomes in teaching and learning. With this at the forefront of my mind, I asked myself: ‘How effective is the
current use of in-class support provided by teaching assistants?’ The answer to my question was that although it was already good, there was room for improvement; as Year Team Leader I was in a position to make those improvements happen.
My aim was to create an environment where there was enhanced teamwork and communication in order to achieve improved progression in learning across the cohort of students in Year One. Having the pleasure of working with an enthusiastic team of Indonesian teaching assistants, I decided to complete a project that would have benefits for teachers, teaching assistants and students alike. With this in mind, I began to develop a system that focused on developing the capacity of Year One teaching assistants. The initial idea was to have well planned and resourced booster groups delivered by the teaching assistants, based on the needs of the cohort of Year One students. I began to achieve this by: Changing the timetable. As with any project there were inevitably some challenges and hurdles to overcome. What I found straight away was that the first challenge was the logistics of carrying out these sessions, while trying to maintain the routine and structure that the students were used to. We managed this by finding a time within the school week that didn’t disturb class teaching time and that allowed for each session to be run twice per week. Once the teaching assistants and students became used to this new system it began to run quite smoothly. Sense of community/teamwork. Within our setting we have one teacher and one teaching assistant per class. When each teaching assistant had decided on the area they would deliver they were then paired up with a teacher from another class within the year group, rather than with the teacher they normally worked with. This had a really positive effect within the year group as a whole, as an abundance of communication between teachers and teaching assistants across the whole year group led to strong collaboration and a real sense of teamwork. Changing teaching and learning expectations. Pairing up a teaching assistant with a teacher different from their class teacher was an effort to develop communication between the year group teachers and teaching assistants. As we had some new teachers and teaching assistants to the year group, this was an opportunity to develop communication across the year group rather than only between the teacher and teaching assistant who worked with them. The teachers then supported their partnered teaching assistant with the planning and delivery of sessions. This was innovative in that the teaching assistants were in charge of the delivery of their session rather than being directed by the class teacher, as would normally happen in class. Empowering the teaching assistants. Teaching assistants chose an area that they would like to focus on for their booster sessions with the students. This enabled the teaching assistants to have ownership of what they were delivering and to feel confident in their abilities to support the students with their learning. Steve Covey (2008) suggests that building trust and respect has a significant impact on culture and climate, which definitely became evident throughout this project. This then led to opportunities for teaching assistants to demonstrate their skills to the Primary Leadership Team, thereby gaining the opportunity to apply for and gain their higher level teaching assistant qualifications within our school setting.
The successes achieved during this project completely surpassed my initial intentions or expectations. There were noteworthy improvements as well as clear progression in student learning; the teaching assistants became empowered, and showcased their ability to develop their roles as educators. The increased communication proved to be invaluable across the year group. There is no doubt that what emerged at the end of this venture was extremely rewarding for all involved. Comments made by different teaching assistants included the following: “I feel I have developed my skills in planning and how to teach Maths Mastery. It is very different from supporting other groups. I have to find different ways of teaching when the children find the lessons a little bit tricky.”
Following on from this project, and after having presented my findings to the Primary Leadership Team, the school is continuing to move forward with upskilling the teaching assistants not only within the year group they are assigned to, but also across key stages, which will provide all teaching assistants with a broad area of skills enabling them to hold positions in any year group throughout the school. We believe in providing opportunities for local staff to develop and share their skills in an effort to create a positive working environment with teams of enthusiastic teaching assistants within an international school setting. Some of these opportunities have also included the teaching assistants attending and presenting at a Job Alike Workshop event in Kota Kinabalu. As educators, we have a responsibility to support the students in our care in the best way possible: something that teachers and teaching assistants feel equally passionate about at British School Jakarta.
References
Covey S (2008) The speed of trust. One thing that changes everything. London: Simon and Schuster Leithwood K (2004) How Leadership Influences Student Learning. Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
