C139: Specialist and Supporting Teachers: Honoring the Unique Role

​Welcome to the second episode of my new series to support specialist and supporting teachers.  

I just want to let you know that in this space you are so valued.  The work you do makes the rest of the school more complete.  Never forget this my friends as you try to navigate your role within the PYP framework. ​

Before we begin, I want to honor the contributions of my friend Yuni Santosa who gave me so many ideas for this series.  She is a fabulous educator who is so passionate about the PYP and creating meaningful learning.  

​Yuni works as a PYP teacher at the International School Ruhr and is also an IBEN member and concept-based trainer.   Yuni provides many contributions online through Toddle App and beyond and I’m so thankful to have her in my professional network. 

​Before we move forward, I want to clarify that these ideas are my personal opinion and not necessarily of the IB.  You need to confirm everything with your IB consultant and/or IB world school manager.  The ideas I am about to share are based on my experiences and observations.  Now let’s get to it!

​Unique Role

​For many learners, the specialist classes are the only place where learners can just breathe and be themselves.  This is a bold statement.  I’ve seen hundreds of different school systems through my own personal experiences, leading workshops, and consulting.  Even within the IB PYP system, I’ve seen many schools that are so focused on content delivery that they forget to think of the learner in the process.  

This means that we absolutely need you to better understand your unique role and the power you have to change young people’s lives.  I recently heard Ethan Hawke, famed actor, speak about the power of the arts.  He purports that people don't consider the arts in everyday life until a crisis enters their lives.  Then, they turn to the arts to sort out their thoughts and emotions to make sense of what is happening.  

​I would extend this movement and understanding our bodies.  In my lifetime, I saw this the greatest during the pandemic.  People soon became interested in bike riding, lifting weights, and using a variety of home-based equipment.  Since access to public spaces was limited, people had to become creative in their homes.  

During this time, the supporting teacher was needed more than ever.  As we leveraged online teaching at home, especially for at-risk learners, they leaned into the additional supports.  It was the time that parents realized that their child had special learning needs and the power of the role of the teacher.  

Specialist and supporting teachers help learners to make connections to ideas being explored in a new way.  This is power.  When a EAL support teacher using the language of the learner profile as a way to describe how a child is learning, this is powerful.  When an ICT/computer teacher guides learners to consider how they will use images to help them to make unusual connections, it is powerful. 

​Common planning time

​To make learning more connected, we need to honor common planning time for the specialist and supporting teachers.  This can come in two ways:  common planning time within the team and with the homeroom teachers. 

Common planning time as a team helps to bridge the gap between specialist and supporting teachers to the homeroom.  They can bounce around ideas with each other about how they will approach teaching the key and related concepts, ATL, and learner profile attributes.  We don’t need to know each other’s content to bring HOW we will all approach teaching the skills and big ideas of the unit.  This is often lost when there is no common team planning time. 

Where can we get the time?  Staff meetings.  There are so many ideas that are shared in a staff meeting that only pertains to the homeroom teacher like progress monitoring, response to intervention, testing, etc.  Look at the agenda items and plan the whole group first and then allow specialist and supporting teachers to go off to plan together.  Consider how the coordinator will lead the first session, so they can share some pedagogical ideas and model best practice. 

During the second portion of the staff meeting, the coordinator and the specialist and supporting teachers can break off into their planning session.  The coordinator can set a learning target and the group can co-create a success criteria.  The group divides and begins to plan through the unit focus(es).  The coordinator can circulate to answer questions and clear up misconceptions. 

Did I just hear you sigh out of happiness?  We just need to manage our time differently.  As humans, we are inherently driven to connect and make connections.  It’s unfair that specialist and supporting teachers don’t have equal amounts of time to collaborate.  It establishes a hierarchy of importance when there is an imbalance.

Of course, there is always shared preparation time to reinforce the planning, but we can’t always rely upon it.  I’ve seen so many specialist teachers lose their planning time to cover homeroom teachers who were out.  Not good, Once again, it establishes that the specialist and supporting teachers are not as important and don’t deserve their planning time. Yikes!

​Professional development

Your role as a specialist and supporting teacher is different.  You have unique professional learning needs.  I think it is wonderful to get a baseline of the PYP programme by taking a category 1 workshop.  You get a big picture of how the programme operates and how it might drive your role.  Oftentimes, the learning ends here, although there are so many different options.   

The category 2 and 3 workshops begin to delve into specifics about different parts of the programme, such as inquiry and learning for conceptual understanding.  Equally, there are specific workshops that lean into learning, diversity, and inclusion, the role of the arts, the role of subjects, just to name a few. 

When you are ready to make deeper connections, consider taking the What is an IB education series.  These workshops help us to deeply understand how to leverage the approaches to learning (ATL) across the programme, how to investigate through the lens of inquiry, and so forth.  

Advocate for your role through professional development.  Continually seek ways to embed the program into your practice, instead of the other way around.  It’s not as separated as you might think. 

​Deconstructing planning in the PYP

​One of the biggest questions for many specialists is how do I plan authentically?  We are going to break apart different parts of the unit planner and plan them through your unique roles.  I will give you examples in various roles, so you have a clearer picture.  

I have already completed this process in my ATL series.