Over my four years at Deakin University, I have taken many opportunities which contributed to the development of my professional identity. Some of the most important include:

• Maintaining a blog as a space for reflection - http://educatingerin.edublogs.org

• Spending 3 weeks networking and learning with other Indonesian teachers at the Endeavour Language Teacher Fellowship program. The language immersion, classroom activities, cultural experiences (like learning traditional dance, see below) and friendships formed made this program essential for any language teacher. 

• Exploring the endless variety of new ICT products available, such as website creators (this website was created with Nvu; Google Pages), mind mapping programs (Gliffy, Inspiration), and audio recording and editing with Audacity and exploring technology's potential to engage learners and create meaningful learning contexts.

• Participating in a large number of professional development sessions, including:
• CAS calculators (both Casio Classpad and TI n-spire) 
• Discipline Strategies 
• Parent-teacher Relationships 
• Voice Care
• the Code of Conduct
• Restorative Justice
• Report Writing

     

• Traveling to Indonesia for a month, including staying with an Indonesian host family (see Kiko and I above!) and teaching some classes at SMA 2 Makassar (a secondary school). While technically a holiday, I see any time spent in Indonesia as professional learning, as I interact with the culture and language, as well as collecting teaching resources which I can use to create engaging learning experiences for my students

• Through my membership of both the Indonesian (VILTA) and Mathematics (MAV) subject associations, I have expanded my professional reading and content knowledge of many valuable websites, assisted with and participated in conferences, attended relevant events, and developed my understanding of the reality of the profession.

• Learning from many experienced LOTE teachers at the Professional Standards Project for Languages, run by the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Association. Engaging with these standards helped me to think about best practice, and what I could do to achieve this.