Today's goings on.

After some hard work over the holidays;

Today I have uploaded a revised edition of "Making yourself a desirable CRT" and also reduced the price.

I’m Mel, the Coordinator for 2 successful CRT Collegial Networks in Victoria, Australia with a total membership of just under 300 casual teachers.  We are groups of regional CRTs, a term which encompasses Relief teachers and Emergency teachers, often grouped under “Substitute Teachers” too, but many states or countries have their own specific terms.  The purpose of these networks is to provide CRT specific Professional Development opportunities as well as to help CRTs get access to information, advice on strategies and resources CRTs need that full-time teachers often just can’t supply.

Part of coordinating these networks is communicating with both schools and CRTs on a regular basis to discuss the various issues involved with the local CRT workforce.  One of the things that this has allowed me to do is examine what it is that makes CRTs valuable to schools and what they look for in building their casual workforce.  This booklet is to assist you to be more than “just be a CRT”, offering advice and inside information on how to turn yourself into a desirable CRT that gets offered work on a more frequent basis than others.

My mother has been a respected school principal for many years, all that time hearing “shop talk” while I was growing up, gives me some valuable insights into that side of the nature of CRT work.  Having been a CRT for many years, presenting CRT aimed Professional Development Opportunities and running a pair of CRT Support networks gives me a really good look at the other of the coin too.

This document is going to discuss some things that you have heard before, for the sake of completeness, but it’s also going to include some other things that aren’t very widely known or thought about too!  

The simple fact is that being a desirable CRT results in more dollars in your pocket and it often seems like there’s not a lot of advice out there about how to go about making yourself as desirable as you can be beyond the basics.  This document has been formulated from years of accumulated knowledge and experience from both myself and members of the 2 collegial networks in order to give you the exact same advice we would give to our closest friends!

The booklet is designed to help you integrate into the profession with advice on how to make sure you leave a positive impact in every school and classroom you walk into. 

The topics covered:

• Who do you want to be as a CRT?
• Basic Work Ethics.
• Starting with the basics.
• Professional Development and Collegial Learning.
• Appropriate collegial opportunities.
• High maintenance areas of learning.
• Specialize in something useful.
• Planning as a CRT.
• Your "CRT Toolkit" or "Bag of Tricks".
• Don't be on the outside looking in.
• Using professional Development.
• Be open to change.
• It's not your classroom.
• Be Proactive.
• Summary;  Being a desirable CRT.
• Victoria specific information (local version ONLY)

Other related topics are also included as "side notes".   All in all there is 15 pages of down-to-earth adivice (not including the cover page and topics list) from about 30 contributing CRTs.

The local version (which is complete and has additional Victoria specific content) is designed to be freely available to ALL Victorian CRTs.  We are currently exploring avenues to make this part of the plan happen.

Outside of Victoria the booklet will be on sale through my personal Teachers Pay Teachers store.  All profits from the sale of the booklet will go right into the Wodonga and Shepparton CRT Support Networks in order to continue providing professional development/learning opportunities for Hume region CRTs.  This not only helps us maintain our registration but also raises the professional profile of CRTs and benefits the 1000's of Victorian students which we teach.

Local feedback;

• This is fantastic! I wish I had something like this when I started being a CRT or returning teacher. It has great advice for all stages of CRT’s too – great to revisit ways of being proactive and improving our skill set. I really like the layout. Well done!
• Seems so simple to read now, but I do wish I had know this several years ago. Great job you guys!!
• Wow, I was expecting a couple of sheets of dot points! This is great thanks!
• Great job. Answered a lot of my questions. Thanks.
• Thankyou so much! All of this helps bucket loads!! :)

Coming up in the not too distant future:

• More "1 book Lesson Plans".
• A 40 resource pack all linked to Pears including Literacy, Maths and more!
• A Developmental play pack for k-1 classrooms.

 Regards,

Mel
40 weeks, 40 classrooms!