Downtime to upskill

Old dogs, new tricks etc.

With the restrictions of COVID-19, we have sadly had to put on hold our bread-and-butter work of travelling around the country delivering workshops. But don’t think we’ve been idle! One of the things we’ve been using this downtime for is staff professional development. On top of attending a number of open-access webinars and courses, we’ve had some special people share their expertise with us over the last few months.

Linguist and language teacher Mark Richards was our guide for a deep dive into the workings of the national curriculum for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages, as well as various state syllabuses. We learnt about the different criteria and approaches teachers might use in lesson planning, enabling us to better support school-based language teachers in our workshops. Another linguist and long-time board member Stephen Morey taught us what he knows about making effective teaching videos, sharing tips and tricks he has learnt through his own work with language speakers in India.

Excitingly, with a mind to building our capacity to host online workshops during this time, we practiced using online collaborative whiteboarding tools with Alex Schmidt, while mediator and facilitator Justine Davis focused on skills we can use no matter the medium. True to her role as facilitator, Justine helped us to realise the strengths and skills we already hold as a collective body, so that we can use them in intentional ways as we go forward in our own roles as workshop facilitators.

We thank each of these people for taking the time out to help us grow. Stay tuned to see what we do with all of our learning!