In any teachers' journey, it is of critical importance to reflect on current skills to ascertain if there is any need for improvement. For myself as an educator, I believe I could benefit greatly to enhance my awareness of the following standards:

Focus area 3.7 Engage parents/carers in the education process

As a pre-service teacher, I have lacked experience with teacher-parent communicative and informative methods excluding parent teacher interviews and music/drama performances. However, there is much information that supports parent involvement in their child's learning to enhance academic success and provide a holistic support structure for their child (Family-School and Community Partnerships Bureau, n.d). As such I have decided to explore different strategies for involving parents in the education process of their child and deeply consider how I might apply these methods in future practices. Such strategies involve finding different means to communicate positive experiences and room for improvement such as a phone call, email or a homework section focusing on both positive improvements of the child and room for improvements. Additionally, students can demonstrate both written and visual accounts of their work such as creating a classroom newspaper which demonstrates their current learning topics and progress or have a class camera to capture important learning bell curves which may stimulate effective student-parent conversations. Lastly, another method is making home visits and having a more informal conversation with parents. Whilst I am familiar with methods such as email, phone calls and other blogging platforms, I had not yet considered making home visits or finding creative methods for students to directly involve their parents in their learning. One method I like in particular, is the idea of a class newspaper to provide both a written and visual account of learning would also make a fantastic differentiated option for a summative assessment, and I have decided that once I have a class of my own, I will apply this method for music by asking students to take a screenshot/photo of their work and use a template to write an informative piece about their topics.

Focus area 5.4 Interpret student data

Sometimes, in areas I have little confidence in, I find it hard to adapt teaching strategies and modifying current practices when student worksheets demonstrate limited understanding or capability for the topic. The concern is not in understanding students have not achieved an adequate grasp of the key learning goals or processes but my own ability to indulge in creative thinking concerning modification practices. As this comes from my own struggles with flexibility, this is more of an internal struggle. What I will do in future is consider more diagnostic tasks to ascertain the reason for the lack of information as there are many things that might cause a student to display inadequacy, such as genuine confusion, unclear directions, concerns with group work, home-family struggles, lack of sleep or simple off-task distracted behaviour to name a few. Before graduation I will research more diagnostic methods and engage in discussion with other colleagues who may offer some advice.

Focus area 7.3 Engage with the parents/carers.

According to AITSL (2018), a key component in engaging parents/careers is to discuss then incorporate as many strategies to include parents in their child's learning process as possible, to maintain genuine parent-teacher partnerships. One such strategy is to use different methods of social media to make student learning accessible to parents such as creating a student-centred online blog and granting parent access. Additionally considering convenient communication methods for parents such as Facebook but catering for the needs of parents of diverse linguistic capabilities through various means such as providing newsletters in their native language and providing interpreters in parent-teaching meetings. Another important consideration is the use of language during the communication process, as according to Emmerson et al. (2012) educators must adjust their language to any negative responses on the part of the recipient which may alienate parents from school community or confuse them with teacher jargon.

Focus area 7.4 Engage with professional teaching networks and broader communities.

One area I have not successfully met is the engagement with professional teaching networks beyond collaboration and discussion with supervising teachers and others within the school's community with the attendance of professional development meetings. However, no teacher is supposed to work alone and as such I have deeply considered how I might expand my knowledge of other resources to expand my teaching capabilities for both music and drama subjects. As a classically trained music teacher, I have less confidence in digital compositional methods and am in further need of skill development. Whilst there are resources such as YouTube to assist with these concerns, there are other mentor teachers in which I may converse with on the subject, additionally Deborah Smith has a discussion blog for classroom teachers on Facebook where new content is updated regularly, and teachers may post any questions or concerns when assistance is required. A similar Facebook community collaboration method is available called the Drama and Theatre studies teacher Network which I have recently become a member and Drama Victorians. It is through using these resources that I hope to become a collaborative member of the performing arts community and consider the ever more creative lessons and resources of other performing arts educators.