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Sindy completed her teaching training at university after leaving school. Since graduating as a teacher she has taught secondary curriculum at both rural and suburban schools. When Sindy spoke to me she was teaching VCAL and VCE at an independent rural/regional school in Victoria.

Sindy had been in her current school for six years. She had taught both VCE and VCAL in the school for six years. The VCAL coordinator had approached Sindy and said I’d love you to teach VCAL. Despite her previous 15 years’ experience as a teacher, Sindy replied Oh what’s VCAL all about? Sindy explained why she thought she had been chosen to teach VCAL

… the coordinator was looking for someone a little bit quirky … I’m not a disciplinarian … not everyone can work in VCAL … I try and build

relationships with the kids.

While the VCAL coordinator was supportive of the VCAL program, other staff, including the principal were not necessarily so. When VCAL was first introduced into Sindy’s school she said the principal had been heard to say this will not be a VCAL provider school.

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It was not only the principal who thought poorly of VCAL. Sindy related that other staff would often say oh you’ve got VCAL again you poor thing. Sindy explains that other staff appeared to have the perception that teaching in VCAL

… is like ‘oh you’ve drawn the short straw or oh I’ve got the applied class again, they don’t think I’m good enough to take the, you know, intelligent bunch blah blah.

On the contrary Sindy’s view was

… as a VCAL teacher I think there is not enough kudos given to VCAL teachers it is like you are teacher’s aide. To me that is the equivalent of your status within the school.

… in my school the VCAL coordinator tries to tailor the VCAL staff to what she thinks the kids need. However the school also puts the best physics teacher in VCE physics etc. and the rest of the teachers get put anywhere so for the VCAL coordinator to get the ‘best’ teacher for the

[VCAL]students that person needs to ‘battle’ a bit.

Sindy explained that the VCAL students were also frequently forgotten by the school, providing an example that occurred during the annual school photos for year 12. She said they’ll make an announcement over the PA “VCE class for the photos” with no mention of the VCAL class. At other times year 12 photos had been scheduled when the VCAL students were away from the school, for example at VET study or on work placement.

The learning environment and resources for VCAL students was also perceived by Sindy as poor, Sindy explained

… VCAL is in the ‘shed’ which we share with the woodwork teacher. We have computers but no heaters, it is well resourced as far as Textas [felt tipped pens] and white board markers and every student has a computer. But the structure is like an afterthought. I shouldn’t complain as some schools don’t have that much. I hate the classroom.

Sindy appears to have a natural pedagogical disposition to the type of teaching and learning approaches used in VCAL. While Sindy was not aware of the VCAA principles of applied learning until speaking with me in her interview, the descriptions she provided of her pedagogical practices aligned with student

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learning centred constructivist teaching and learning approaches. Some examples she provided are

… we do lots of group work and we take on board a lot of primary school ideas. I try and build relationships with the kids.

… I’ve been driving to work and I think that I’m going to go to the

newsagents and buy five dirt bike magazines and one on fishing and one on animals[to align with her students’ interests] – sound’s really

embarrassing – but that’s me – I went up there and bought that. Or I’d buy three Herald Suns, three AGEs and an Australian [all are Australian daily newspapers] and they’d all go for the Herald Sun, but that doesn’t matter … I don’t care, doesn’t matter, as long as they are reading.

… we watch things as well – We watched ‘go back to where you came from’ on SBS [Australian television station]. They love watching stuff. We read relevant stuff that they like – I read to them. We read the book about the women who lost her legs in the London bombing as part of a unit on survival stories.

Sindy, like all the participants in my research, frequently referred to her student cohort and it was evident that her practice was centred on her students’ learning needs. The year Sindy spoke to me, she had five VCAL students who had five different learning needs. The year before she had 19 students and 19 different learning needs to which she needed to adapt curriculum content.

… [they are a] very eclectic bunch – we have the punk rocker, very diverse bunch of kids. It is very much listening to the kids and taking a lead from them. They like computers.

… they are still often the kids who have been lost in the system and are the kids with problems such as dysgraphia. As far as literacy goes – a lot of them are bordering on being illiterate because schools have let them down – in some ways we are still are like Victorian England. We still stick kids on chairs and tables and have someone up the front.

… you have to read them [the students] on the day and you have to choose the fights you pick.

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Sindy identified a range of skills she would like to acquire to support her VCAL practice. Most of these skills were related to dealing with her diverse cohort of students

… I feel like a parent sometimes – one of those kids was living with his Uncle - I feel like bringing him home, giving a decent meal and nurturing him. One boy was quite aggressive and upset he missed out on an apprenticeship and he pushed down the letter box of his potential employer – I would like to have had better skills to deal with that.

… I would like to have negotiating skills – I’m all the time trying to entice them to do work.

… a psychologist at times or counsellor – you know boyfriend and girlfriend break up, that is hard, or listening to their friendship issues.

… we have a girl with a tumour who has short concentration periods and we have devised a program specifically for her. I don’t feel very prepared to deal with her. Poor VCAL teachers we do get “it’s too much for her to do VCE so we’ll stick her in VCAL” but then there is a lack of

understanding on my part how those drugs for the tumour might be affecting her personality or memory. So we deal with not only behavioural problems, not only learning issues but also health issues [dysgraphia, ADHD, physical disabilities].

When I asked Sindy how prepared she was to teach VCAL she replied thank goodness I had 15 years of teaching. She would have preferred some specific preparation. For example she would like to go to some seminars on VCAL or see what people are doing at other schools. She also suggested that to buddy

someone and shadow teach at another school would be useful for her VCAL teaching practice.

… I don’t have a psychology degree I have just muddled my way through it. As a coordinator at another school we did do team building of dealing with difficult parents (which I do draw on).

… I draw on being a parent – that has been the big thing especially as my son has been diagnosed with Asperger’s – and I use that. I get advice from the school counsellor (without breaching privacy) or the coordinator

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or the tutor teacher – I draw from these things to compensate for a lack of structured training.

… You really have to work well with the coordinator of VCAL and you are part of a team with the students.

… I would like to be sent on some courses to do with the principles of applied learning [to which I had just introduced her] to formalise in my mind, I have been teaching long enough to understand what these particular kids like, but I would like to go away and have a structured introduction to applied learning theory and practical suggestions. It would be good to do something on-line perhaps.

Sindy articulated clear differences between teaching in VCAL and her other teaching. In Sindy’s VCAL classroom her students represent a greater

concentration of a range of learning needs and so her teaching strategies need to be individually tailored. In her VCE classroom a collection or range of teaching strategies will suffice. She believes the VCE is curriculum driven.

… in VCE geography I walk into the classroom knowing the assessment tasks, in VCAL I don’t. While we try to differentiate in delivering VCE content we don’t/ can’t in regard to the VCE assessment tasks and SACs [School Assessed Coursework]. In VCAL I can differentiate the delivery of the content and the assessment task. The VCAL program allows the students to generate their own testing. In the past I have asked them to design an assessment template as part of their project (for example a Riding for the disabled project) so they can understand how they can be marked as competent from the learning process.

Sindy says she comes out of one classroom talking to her students in one way and into a VCAL classroom where there are different cultural markers in the conversation

… I wouldn’t talk to my year 7s like I talk to the VCAL class, mind you I don’t want to be their best friend, but at the end of the day I think you have to be more relaxed around them because really they could be out in the workforce – they could be working with me in a café serving coffee or whatever – so I sort of have to respect that as well.

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… it is not me up the front saying things like “get your foot off that table” it is more “everyone how was your weekend – oh Thomas you wouldn’t do that at home would you” – so it is always the way you talk to them.

It is clear that Sindy is a reflective practitioner. During the interview she is open about saying that when her VCAL activities miss the mark she thinks it is often because she is in her VCE mode or did not plan it properly – or read the group as well as she could have.

… I might have gone in there thinking ‘oh I’m really interested in this, I’m going to do it today, even if it kills me. If it doesn’t work, sometimes it can be where they are at as well, they are the troublesome kids, they’ve been naughty all the way through secondary school, they are the kids on uniform detentions, the kids on academic detentions, they have got really low self-esteem. It might sound cliché but it is so true, they just fall into that group. Often their personal appearance they are not out there winning popularity competitions. There are some great kids though, but they don’t fit into that mould. Sometimes they have brought their baggage to class and I could have done the most amazing lesson and it would have gone pear shaped anyway.

Sindy did not believe that all teachers were suited to working in VCAL saying I don’t think everyone can teach VCAL.