Highly Accomplished and Lead Teacher accreditation

Scott Fisk, Principal: The HALT process or the Highly Accomplished and Lead Teacher process is an opportunity for teaching staff to demonstrate their teaching expertise and skills at higher levels than Proficient.

Andrea Webster, Principal: I think it's probably the most authentic professional learning opportunity you'll get to develop yourself.  As a teacher, a lot of professional learning is based around the things that you do or a programme that you're implementing. Whereas, when you're looking at your Highly Accomplished and Lead teaching levels, it's about building your own skills.

Andrew Cornwall, Highly Accomplished teacher: The accreditation journey somewhat thins the walls of our classrooms. We have to engage with our colleagues; we have to talk about our practise, and that exposes our practise to new and different ways of learning from and together, and that's something that as a profession we need.

There's something about that professional growth journey that is really important for a lot of teachers. And you'll hear a lot of HALTs talk about life before HALT and after HALT, and the different ways they think about their own practise and the influence and impact they have within their school.

Caroline Jarvis, Highly Accomplished Teacher: That sense of accomplishment and pride when I did actually achieve my Highly Accomplished accreditation was amazing. And I think as a result of that, the confidence that I have in my teaching, not just that what I'm doing in my own classroom is working, but that the advice and the way that I'm supporting colleagues is effective. I can really see their confidence grow and also the outcomes of their students really improve as a result has been really amazing.

Kerrie Quee, Highly Accomplished Teacher: It's a great thing for people to look at no matter how long they've been teaching. For people like me who came in really late to the scene but could still, of course, analyse my own practise, you know, 30 years on, which was really great.

Andrew: Since becoming a Highly Accomplished Teacher many years ago, I've had an enormous amount of opportunities that I potentially wouldn't have had if I had remained as a Proficient Teacher. To be involved in Curriculum Reform, influencing policy. I think one of the things that Highly Accomplished Teachers are is a group of expert teachers who are available to have a voice.

Troy Neale, Lead Teacher: One of the most important things is that it's classroom focused, Highly Accomplished and Lead asks you to stay in the classroom. And the classroom teacher is the most powerful person apart from the principal in a school. So, to have an accreditation system that values the main thing, which is teaching and learning, and keeping a focus on that, benefits our students.

Yao May Wong, Lead Teacher: I have to say at one point I almost gave up. I didn't know what to do, whether to continue or whether to just give up. But having done that whole process, I have to say it's definitely worth it cause it has made a huge impact on my teaching. It not only benefits yourself, but your colleagues, your students and your school as well.

Lili D’Cruz, Lead Teacher: You know, we instil in our kids that growth mindset and not giving up. To actually put that hard work in and not giving up, it's actually modelling to the students that as adults we are actually doing that as well. You know, I had been in the classroom, I have worn many different hats and I was thinking, well, what now? It allowed me to actually reflect and evaluate my moral purpose to teaching and why I was actually in the game of teaching to begin with. It actually put me back in the classroom and sent a message loud and clear to my colleagues that I was leading, that I was talking about quality teaching. At the heart of it, we're all teachers and we're here to make a difference every single day.

Lili D’Cruz, Lead Teacher: HALT is great for teachers for the education sector in general. It encourages and promotes the 37 teaching standards at all four career stages. All colleagues get to engage with the teaching standards at a deeper level and really understand the standards and improve teaching practise.

Mark Bateman, Principal: One of the things that I've seen at our school in terms of practical example and the way Steph's been working with our staff is the building of teams. So that's been critical in terms of professional learning, Steph's growth, the teacher's growth. And what I've seen with those teams is there's a much greater sense of collegiality and willingness to solve problems. Through the HALT accreditation process we're much more willing to engage in solutions for those issues and do that collaboratively with staff who are on board.

Stefanie Thom, Lead Teacher: The biggest epiphany to sit in this meeting where we had myself, Mark, my principal, one of our coordinators who was supporting and supervising a pre-service teacher, was for them to see in our work, her work, his work, the flow on of our teaching standards and the reason why they are there.

Mark Bateman, Principal: There can often be a mindset, I guess, when you're in a leadership position that you need to conduct, you need to be the one that's in charge. And I think HALT accreditation really holds up the idea that leadership can be spread, that it can be shared - and so much more is achieved by that.

Brenda Timp, Principal: Teachers are naturally reflective people, but the language of the professional teaching standards directs teachers to be, again, precise and focused. You know, I think often of the high esteem in which we hold people of other professions. Well, I think these standards give teachers something to be so proud of.

Andrew Cornwall, Highly Accomplished Teacher: You know, change happens at the speed of trust, and these kinds of trusting relationships are often built when we've got Highly Accomplished Teachers working in these kind of mentoring roles means that we can have this practise uplift. My focus is not about standing out and being different, it's about, ‘How am I helping others to build their capacity in that classroom space?’.

Caroline Jarvis, Highly Accomplished Teacher: You're identifying colleagues that you think might be able to go through it, so you can see that in their own practise, they're meeting those Highly Accomplished Standards and then from there you start to sort of grow within your school. And then I know of other schools that have sort of banded together to sort of share between networks to having a Highly Accomplished Teacher in your school really helps to sort of grow that.

Scott Fisk, Principal: You create a culture around teaching and learning. And what I mean by that is that you've got conversations in the staff room that are much more organic because you've got staff who are looking at their practise and looking for opportunities to really dig deep and look at their practise. And it is a little bit contagious to some degree too because those staff room conversations can be about teaching learning. That's what every principal wants to hear.

Andrea Webster, Principal: By providing Lead and Highly Accomplished Teachers the opportunity to run professional learning and lead initiatives within your school, they're then not spending time sitting in a professional learning session where they already may have the knowledge and expertise. Rather they're leading it and providing it to the people who need it. And then that also gives other opportunities for the senior executive to lead and implement other initiatives. And it shares that, again, sustainability and that culture within the school of a love of learning.

Scott Fisk, Principal: And as a school principal, why wouldn't we want Highly Accomplished and Lead Teachers in the school? You've got these teachers, teachers who are willing to challenge and critically think about their teaching practise to be better. That's what we want all teachers to be doing.

Brenda Timp, Principal: I think the most important benefit of HALT accreditation is that it affirms teachers in their daily practise. They can see the value of the contribution that they're making to improved student learning and most importantly they are really having a significant impact on their colleagues. It really gives them a sense of being a professional.

Andrew Cornwall, Highly Accomplished teacher: As a teacher, you like to see people grow and that,  that doesn't - it's not just the students in your classroom, that's your colleagues next door. So I think one of the impacts that it can have at a system level is right at that proximal space of the classroom.

Caroline Jarvis, Highly Accomplished Teacher: And not just having the accreditation, but the obvious result of that is having all these really highly effective practitioners that really are working together and supporting their colleagues.

Andrea Webster, Principal: Previously there's there've been myths, I guess really around it, it's too hard. It's not real, but it's not anything extra. It's actually just looking at the work you do, reflecting on it, which we do as a professional anyway, and just documenting that to share it and record it. It brings about constant growth. So just because something's worked in a classroom doesn't mean we stop and we don't listen to the new research. We're ever-evolving, we keep growing and it's sustainable within the school when that's the culture and the expertise that you have.

Scott Fisk, Principal: I think that culture of continuous improvement is demonstrated explicitly through the HALT process. That real mindset of excellence starts to really embed into the school as well. These are the teachers that naturally previously would never have set forward and what they're doing now is they're thinking, OK, well how can I demonstrate my practise at a standard that I'm working towards. As a school principal there is no harm in that. In fact, all it can do is add value to the school.

Brenda Timp, Principal: I think that the more of these teachers we have, the richer our schools will be, the more satisfied our teachers will be because they will have such confidence and know that they are experts, expert educators.