Yvonne McBlain of Falkirk Education Services Curriculum Support team has been working with our team of facilitators for the Falkirk Teaching for Deep Learning programme. There are 18 trainee facilitators for the programme – 15 from the primary sector and 3 from the secondary sector. Some are already taking on a distributed leadership role in facilitating teacher learning communities within their own establishments. Others are willing to facilitate sessions across the authority, and anyone wishing to access their services should contact yvonne.mcblain@falkirk.gov.uk . The latest training meeting on 3rd October was the first opporunity for the facilitators to practise delivering the programme content to each other. Kim Davidson from Bo’ness Public PS, Jaime Thomson and Shirley Gallivan of Comely Park PS led the rest of the group through session 12 “Using professional collaboration to reflect upon & support teaching for deep learning”. The group was able to experience this session as participants, and then give feedback to Kim, Jaime and Shirley on their delivery. Read some of the feedback below:
Reflected and developed comments really well; Calm and purposeful
Pace really good – just right amount of time to reflect; Nice conversational feel
Allowed discussion to keep going – allowed it to go deeper; Circulated well
Deep understanding of content; Made participants feel comfortable
This meeting also gave Laura Wallace, Fiona Caygill and Mary Jalland an opportunity to share how sessions they had facilitated in their schools had gone. Staff colleagues gave these facilitators very positive feedback about the value of the sessions for them. Mary reported that her colleagues had put into practice some of their actions from the session the very next day! This training session was a very positive experience for all concerned, and we look forward to the remaining 3 meetings this year where the other facilitators get a chance to deliver their chosen session to our group. Click here to visit the Falkirk Teaching for Deep Learning Glow group and browse the session materials. * You may have to request permission to join the group – just click and ensure you type a short message explaining who you are and what establishment you work in.
Glad things are going so well. Maybe need to think about next steps at a strategic level in terms of how we further upskill our teachers. Be very interested to know your thoughts.
We are always looking for progess and impact , asking ourselves the question, ‘what difference are we making?’ Reading this blog post and learning about the commitment and capacity of our facilitators really cheered me- thanks for that!! You are all modelling the very essence of effective professional learning. I am in on this work for the long game, this group of facilitators will grow.
That’s good news indeed especially given concerns about cutbacks. I was worried that curriculum support might fall foul of the guillotine when in fact we need to increase it if we want to impact on upskilling teachers and other staff.