Module 5 Provide effective support for your colleagues

Part 1: Maintain working relationships with your colleagues

Your job as a teaching assistant means that you are in a professional position with responsibility. In order to provide effective support, you need to be able to:

• Know what the institution’s expectations of you are

• Know how your role and responsibilities fit with others in the institution

• Manage your time effectively

• Ask for and give constructive advice to your colleagues.

As a teaching assistant, the school will have expectations and requirements of you in how you carry out your roles and responsibilities and this will be set out in your job description.

When reflecting on your roles and responsibilities you may find that many of your activities are not related to the direct delivery of the curriculum, but they will still be of valuable support to the learning environment. You should also know whom you are immediately responsible to and the line of management that you are part of. They should always be the person you see first if there is a problem.

Your main support is likely to be the class teacher, but you can also get support from other people in the line of management. Secretaries and caretakers are often very knowledgeable people who may help you with information. There is also usually a union representative who can give advice on conditions of service, etc.

In your role as a teaching assistant, you will have working relationship with a variety of people. These could include:

• Learners

• Teachers

• Parents/guardians or carers

• LEA support staff

• Managers

• Inspectors

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• Other TAs and support staff

• A SENCO

• Educational psychologists

• Other therapists

The importance of communication and being professional in your approach to working relationships

The success of working relationships relies on a professional manner and clear communication. Whoever you come into contact with, they should be treated with respect. A calm, confident and objective approach helps whether you are dealing with a governor enquiring about some aspect of your work, an upset child or an angry parent, guardian or carer.

To be effective in working relationships you need to develop/practice the following skills:

• Conversing

• Disclosing

• Listening

• Initiating

• Showing care

• Managing anger

• Assertion

• Able to resolve conflict in relationships

One of the most important aspects of the above skills when working with people is listening. Children in particular are very quick to know if someone is ‘not really listening to them’ even if you are giving an answer, and this may have a profound and long-term impact on your relationship with them. We have looked at how you can develop effective learning skills in some of the mandatory modules.

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Other things that you need to be aware of in building effective working relationships are your own and other people’s:

Prejudices Values Ethics

Culture Beliefs Social class

Feelings Anxieties Fears

It isn’t possible to know all the details of all these factors when dealing with someone, but you should be aware that they may be different from your own but should still be respected and considered.

Working as a team

A successful institution is built on the cooperation and skills of its staff and it is important that all members of the team support each other and communicate.

Encourage and support others

This happens through encouraging colleagues to express their own ideas and allowing them to develop. It is important to create an atmosphere where people are happy to be honest and take risks.

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Members of a team need to get feedback on their job performance and the chance to improve it. It is important to try to handle criticism yourself before giving it to others. The main points to focus on are: Receiving criticism

• Listen carefully and respond only to the facts

• Be fair – the criticism may be deserved

• Perhaps you have a genuine problem and could discuss it

• You may be able to obtain advice that will help you

• Be positive

• Remain calm to earn respect

• Ignore rude and abusive criticism

Giving criticism:

• Choose a good moment

• Avoid being personal and stick to the facts

• Use positive comments that are constructive not negative or abusive

• Make sure you are honest

• Allow other people to express themselves

• Discuss how improvements can be made

• Do not criticise in public

• Remain polite and keep calm even if you are nervous

If your relationship with your colleagues is a good one then it is likely that they will value your comments, particularly if it shows you have considered the task being planned or that you have particular knowledge.

Don’t be afraid to draw on your experiences and knowledge for the benefit of the learners, e.g. you may have lived in a country that the teacher plans to include in a geography lesson. You may have photographs and artefacts and be able to suggest a use for them that would add to the learner’s stimulation. You could approach the teacher with ‘would it be any use if I brought in such and such’ rather than ‘I think these would make a more interesting lesson’. The second comment implies a criticism of the teacher in that the lesson they had planned wasn’t interesting.

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Motivate others

This is connected to the previous issue of feedback, as everyone responds well to praise and knowing that they are respected and valued. You can show this respect by thanking people for their support, or by being positive when a task has been completed well.

Staff are motivated by each other and also by the management structure of the institution. A person who is enthusiastic and committed in their work will start to feel less motivated to continue if their role is not valued or recognised within the organisation.

Brief and take part in team meetings and discussions

Effective team meetings are an essential element of a successful organisation, along with motivated staff, happy children and satisfied parents. Discussions can take place in a formal or informal way. Some teachers put aside a few minutes at the end of each day to evaluate the pupil’s learning and behaviour, and whether or not the learning outcomes on the lesson plans have been achieved. This is a good time to discuss any issues regarding individual children, activities or events that have happened, and to discuss how improvements or changes can be made for future lessons and activities.

Where different members of staff work on a part time basis, it can be a good idea to have a ‘hand over’ meeting at the beginning of their session to ensure that all practitioners are up to date with the relevant information and lesson plans are discussed.

More formal meetings take place for a variety of reasons and can require the presence of every member, not just the team leader. It is important to remember that being a good team member is a collective responsibility. Keeping meetings to a schedule is very important. Therefore, an agenda is often created, which states what will happen or be discussed at the meeting. This will be circulated beforehand. In order to operate effectively, a good manager will make sure that his or her team are briefed before a meeting. This is an opportunity to let people know what is happening and so team members are more likely to be cooperative (and gossip is reduced). A chairperson will be in charge of the meeting and will encourage everyone to follow the agenda. A secretary will record what is said in the meeting in the form of minutes.

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When you are attending a meeting it is important to use questions appropriately:

- Check knowledge by asking:

- ‘Do you mean…?’

- Gain more information by asking:

- ‘How…?’

- ‘Why…?’

- ‘When…?’

- ‘What…?’

- Exchange ideas with people:

- ‘What do you think about …?’

- Obtain advice:

- ‘How could I have …?’

- To see if someone agrees:

- ‘Do you agree…?’

Negotiation skills can be useful in a meeting and result in people reaching an agreement from two different starting points.

Manage your time effectively

As a professional you have to plan your time carefully. You have already recorded that apart from actually being with learners, you may need to fill in records and prepare materials, maintain and set out resources. You should also leave time for discussions with colleagues and updating your skills and information.

In a busy institution it is easy to take on more than you can effectively deal with. Other staff may not be aware of the number of tasks you may be involved in and see you as a ‘spare pair of hands’, asking if you could just do this or that. As part of your professional role it is all right for you to politely decline or give a time when you can attend to the task (but you should then remember to do it). It can cause a lot of frustration and ultimately bad relationships if you fail to carry out tasks you have said you will do. It is a good idea to carry a diary or notebook with you, so you can have an ongoing record of commitments. You also need to take regular breaks and not omit meals. Plan your day so you don’t spend your lunchtime at the photocopier.

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Stress

Working with colleagues can be very rewarding but it is sometimes stressful. It can be difficult to support colleagues under stress in a busy atmosphere where the needs of the children must come first. However, time should be given to a colleague who is suffering from stress and help offered where appropriate. This could include counselling, assertiveness training or medical help.

Stress can be revealed in a variety of ways. A colleague may be tearful, constantly tired, lacking concentration, sleepless, tense, anxious or indecisive. Sometimes such symptoms can lead to serious illness if the person is not supported. Your supervisor or manager should be the first point of contact if you are concerned about a colleague.

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Part 2: Develop your effectiveness in a support role

In order to make sure you remain effective in your support role you must keep up to date with current practices and make sure you are aware of any new initiatives taking place in the educational sector. As you would evaluate the development of the children you work with, you need to evaluate your own development needs in relation to your roles and responsibilities and to plan how you will achieve these outcomes.

The process can be divided into four areas:

- Personal reflection and evaluation of your work

- Obtain colleague/management feedback through regular appraisals and annual performance reviews

- Evaluate feedback given and assess development needs

- Assess development opportunities available and how you will access these

Personal reflection

There are a number of authors who have written and developed models for the personal reflection process. Christopher Johns (1995) notes in his book, that reflection enables the practitioner to assess, understand and learn through their experiences. It is a personal process that usually results in some change for the individual in their perspective of a situation or creates new learning for the individual. Donald Schön (1987) in his work identifies two types of reflection. These are:

• reflection-in-action - the ability of professionals to ‘think what they are doing while they are doing it’.

• reflection-on-action - This is reflection after the event. Consciously undertaken, and often documented.

We learn from our mistakes and from our achievements. Reflective practice means taking time to think about the way we have completed a project - what was successful and what we might have done differently. More generally, it can be extremely rewarding to analyse working practice and systems.

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How to reflect on and evaluate your own work

There are many different forms in which reflection can take place. I’m sure you have had a situation where you are thinking about what you are doing as you are conducting an activity or learning opportunity with the children and asking yourself questions as you go along, such as ‘is this activity working?’, ‘did Jack understand that bit?’ or ‘did I turn the oven off?’ This is a simple way to reflect-in-action. You may then talk to the classroom teacher about how you felt the activity went afterwards, and how Jack may need more individual support when undertaking practical activities and this is a form of reflection-on-action. The institution in which you work will have systems in place to reflect and evaluate lesson plans and activities in relation to child development, as these form part of the observation and planning process within the curriculum. You should also have systems in place to allow you to reflect and evaluate your own work and practices and these should form part of the staff development system in your setting.

You may have noted down points that are similar to the learning development record illustrated overleaf.

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Name:

Learning and Development Activity Record Subject:

Date: Type of activity:

Summary of what was covered and/or what was learned:

Possible application(s) of what was learned:

Possible area(s) of impact on career opportunities if any:

Other possible development activity(s) suggested by this activity:

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By reviewing a process after it has happened we can learn to reflect not only on the expected outcomes, those identifiable before the process, but also on the unexpected.

This can be summarised as prospective and retrospective learning. In one, you look forward to what you expect to learn, and in the other you look back and see what you actually learnt. The ability to do this will grow with practice, and it is this process of learning to learn or indeed learning to relearn which is at the heart of CPD. As reflective learning develops into a habit, so you become more critically aware of the way you work, plan, relate, decide, etc. whilst the process of completing a learning development record will enable you to identify further development needs. Obtain colleague/management feedback through regular appraisals and annual performance reviews

What is appraisal?

Appraisal is a management tool used to promote continuous learning and improvement through a process of self-assessment and reflection. An appraisal centres upon improving an individual’s performance and development by means of a well-prepared, honest and open discussion between the appraiser and appraisee. Appraisals provide a formal, recorded, regular review of an individual's performance, and a plan for future development. Purpose of appraisal

The main purpose of appraisal is to improve the performance of individual members of staff, and thereby improve the performance of the whole of the institution. An appraisal gives rise to an action plan of continuous learning and improvement. It also ensures that an individual's performance is in tune with the organisation's strategic objectives. Through the establishment of individual development needs, appraisals are essential for facilitating career and succession planning. The benefits from staff appraisal

There are a number of beneficiaries from staff appraisal. These are:

Individuals who have the opportunity to: -

- have their contributions recognised and achievements acknowledged

- receive constructive feedback on performance and support to deal with work- related problems

- identify training to improve performance and support in developing their careers

- provide upward feedback on the management of the department or section

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Departments, for which staff appraisal: -

- helps communicate and clarify the goals of the department/section and the roles individuals are expected to play in achieving them

- provides a means to develop systematically the capabilities of staff

- contributes to departmental planning

- improves the quality of management information through feedback from staff

Institution, for which staff appraisal:-

- helps inform strategic planning through staff feedback

- ensures that staff development is related to the strategic requirements of the institution

- helps meet the external requirements for effective performance management throughout the institution

Evaluate feedback given and assess development needs.

Once an appraisal has been completed, you will have highlighted the areas you want to develop either within your current working practices, or in updating and enhancing your knowledge and skills. No one would suggest that they stopped learning the minute they finished their initial training, the learning process continues throughout our careers. With CPD (Continual Professional Development) your learning and development can take place in a more focused, structured and effective way.

Professional development plan Your professional development plan is a key document which can be used to summarise your current activities, identify your aims and goals over a defined period and outline the activities required to achieve these goals. As far as possible you should bring together your personal aspirations and your organisational needs resulting in an agreed personal development plan for the immediate future. The period covered by the professional development plan can vary. The majority will carry out an annual review, but those on short term contracts may benefit from a more flexible approach to CPD, i.e. the setting of goals for the duration of the contract rather than a fixed twelve-month period.

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Professional/Personal Development Plan

This is for your guidance only Covering period:

What do I want/need to learn? (GOAL)

What will I do to achieve this? (ACTIVITIES)

What resources/support will I need?

What will my success criteria be?

Review dates

Using your professional development plan (PDP)

Identify your goals: Your professional development plan (PDP) outlines the:

- Areas where you want to enhance your working life - the skills you want to develop, the goals you want to achieve - not only in your job but also in your career. In each area your PDP outlines the activities required to get you to your goals.

- Recording your intentions in a single place provides a focus for your future working life.

- Review your achievements: Importantly you give each area a review date, at which time you identify what you have achieved.

- Regular review dates help you to recognise how close you are to achieving your goals as well as maintaining momentum and motivation.

- Keep it relevant: Like any plan, your PDP is only effective if it is relevant, up-to- date and used. Changes in your circumstance, knowledge and expectations as well as events in the external world are likely to impact on your chosen areas of development.

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Assess development opportunities available and how you will access these.

Once a PDP has been completed it is important that you have the support to ensure that your goals are achieved, although the extent of this support can vary from each institution. Most schools are governed by the funding and resources available to them from the Local Education Authority and you may find that you have to revise your timescales on your PDP in line with the availability of courses and training opportunities and the budget your institution allocates for staff training.