Teach the Teacher reflection

Whittlesea Secondary College

Our topic: Respect in the classroom

Our goal: To be able to get mutual respect between teachers and students.

Our team: 2 supporting teachers, members from the SRC, members from the SALT leadership team and Keisha from VicSRC.

Timeline: Middle of term 2 to the start of term 4.

Our Teach the Teacher program

We started with coming up with some ideas as to what our topic was and how we were going to do our consultation. We used a survey to gauge feedback from students and used that data to create our professional development (PD) session. We took the teachers through our data, had some opportunities for them to ask questions, and gave them some strategies that we had come up with to help improve respect between teachers and students in the classroom. After the PD we reflected on how it went, what we could improve, how the teachers took on the advice and how we felt doing the PD.

The next steps we have planned are to create a plan for the next couple of years on how to continue Teach the Teacher at our school so that we can continue to address new challenges with our teachers.

What were some challenges you faced?
We felt quite nervous about the process but in the end, it was really fun. When we did our survey only 40 students responded so we didn’t get as much data as we wanted.

What is your advice for other students and schools doing Teach the Teacher?
Don’t be nervous about the process because it is a fun experience. Try and be as open with the other students as possible about the process as we probably didn’t share enough with our peers about it to get them interested.