I have been working as part of a job share now for two and a
half years. I’m still finding my feet with it but am writing this in the hope
to help others who are thinking about it or starting. At the end of my first
full year job sharing I blogged about how it had gone http://mrshalford.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/challenges-of-job.html
I have really enjoyed this year- no irony in that statement
at all. Even with a large class (35 at times) with the huge pile of marking,
extra parent sessions, reports… There is so much in the press about teachers
leaving the profession http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2013/aug/01/why-are-teachers-leaving-education Working part time for me has been the most
positive step I have taken in my teaching career for some time.
So, what works well in our class? Key has to be the
communication. I have read about some teachers who are lucky to have some time
each week when they are both in the class. Budgetary constraints don’t allow
that at my school, but we do talk.
And talk.
And some more!
We keep a book
(filled two this year) in which we leave copious notes for each other. We talk
on the phone at least twice a week. Oh yes, emails too! And the odd text. Without that level of communication I can’t
see how it could work effectively. All
the children and their parents know how regularly we talk about the class and
this has helped us to build strong and positive relationships. In an ideal world we would have one TA in the
class who could be a consistent presence, but there are two of them as well!
One works Monday and Friday, the other the middle part of the week.
We are very different in our personalities, in our teaching
styles, in our interests. But what we share is our passion for teaching, for
helping children to achieve their potential, to build their confidence and self
esteem, to enable them to believe in themselves and to be proud of themselves,
our class, our school. We work in a
school with a really well put together behaviour policy, that helps too.
When it comes to how we plan and deliver the curriculum that
has been a constantly evolving process. Some subjects are split between us
which works well. Maths and English (I know the terms are Literacy and Numeracy
but I have a pet hate for those and insist on calling them maths and English !)
Anyway, for the English this year I taught the majority of the genre work while
my partner concentrated on the SPaG. This was commented on favourably by the
subject leader during the course of the year through lesson observations and
book moderation. We made good use of AFL so that areas that came up in my
teaching needing reinforcement could be covered discretely and I would have a
“zero tolerance” approach for the focus area each week. With the increased
emphasis on SPaG we will definitely be carrying on with this next year. Of
course there are also lots of opportunities for writing across the curriculum
and we follow the Pie Corbett approach to non fiction writing and include all 6
areas each year so these are split between us.
http://www.talk4writing.com/index.html
Maths has been much more of a challenge. In the first year
of job sharing we started by splitting the curriculum so that I did all the
number work and my partner did all the shape,space, measure, data. This worked
fairly well but my partner felt that she didn’t have enough knowledge of their
ability in number. We then tried to work
as one teacher with one of us leaving plans for the other. It was a nice idea
but planning for each other was very time consuming. This year we used the unit
plans from the strategy and split the five units between us each term so that
over the course of the yer we had both taught everything. This worked fairly
well but is not the most consistent way for the children who would be doing one
area Mon/Tues and another on Weds-Fri.
How are we going to organise it for this year? Not totally
sure at the moment. Progress in maths was less than it was for reading and
writing which would indicate that we need to look at how we are planning and
teaching the subject. There have been some interesting ideas on twitter about
planning the maths (http://www.broadbentmaths.com/)
Having asked the twittersphere’s opinions it
seems that the number/everything else split is the most popular…
Why am I blogging about this? Partly to share what has
worked well, partly to find out how others are making their job shares work
well. It’s a constantly evolving process. Being able to communicate well, trust
each other, share similar values are all key points. Most classes have at least
one teacher with PPA cover so job sharing is more common than one might initially
think. Having someone who knows the children as well as you is a real bonus.
Challenge for next year is to get on top of the maths and be
as effective as we possibly can. Anyone
who has any tips to share please do so.
