Michelle Creed

My career in education over the last 20+ years has been varied and enriching. I have been fortunate enough to work in schools all over the state of Victoria, in varying capacities. I have worked as a classroom generalist, specialist in art and PE, CRT, a Teacher Tutor under the Tutor Learning Initiative and I am now working as a full-time classroom teacher. I have been fortunate enough to maintain my career in education while raising my family, and I am now at a time where I can increase my commitment to my career. My goal is to enable students to feel safe and happy as I believe this is the most effective foundation for learning.

I am 46 year old neurodiverse mother of 5 (also neurodiverse) sons, who are now all adults and contributing members of society. My youngest is still completing his high school studies as well as working part time and pursuing an apprenticeship. I am an organiser by nature and enjoy coordinating events and experiences.  For sport and recreation I have played field hockey in the past, where I captained my team but more recently I have become an avid paddler, enjoying exploring our native water-ways in my canoe. Through this I have competed in many races and marathons, earning myself a number of medals for amateur competitions. My proudest achievement in this area is completing the Murray River marathon, a 5 day, 404km paddle from Yarrawonga to Swan Hill and my participation in the national paddling championships in 2023. I have served as Vice President for my paddling club and am one of the main volunteers and organisers of club events. As a hobby, I enjoy painting and crochet. I have crocheted many items, most notably class sets of silent fidgets! There is nothing more distracting than the sound of fidget spinners in the classroom, so I solved this for my classroom by creating silent infinity cubes and crocheted marble mazes. They are a hit and I've had many requests from other teachers to create more for their rooms, too.  I am at a time in my life where I am ready to contribute more to my career and I believe I have potential in a role of leadership. I am completely invested in my school and feel very passionate about preserving the heart & soul that has been cultivated by talented educators before me. Being able to continue that legacy is something I aim to achieve. 

• Professional Foundation Certificate in Specific Learning Disorders SPELD, 2021
• BSEM, Berry Street, 2021
• Love maths workshop Michael Minas, 2021
• Maths midsets, Jo Boaler, 2023
• First Aid, St John, 2024
• Asthma first aid Asthma Australia, 2024
• Writing traits masterclass, Nerissa Leung, 2024
• Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships, H Cahill 2025

Throughout my teaching career I feel most proud of some key accomplishments.

1. Effective Classroom management & Improved Wellbeing and management of School refusal for neurodiverse learners

This year I have taken on a particularly challenging grade 3/4 cohort. Within my class of 21 students I have three funded students and a significantly high number of diagnosed and undiagnosed neurodiverse learners. This cohort presented significant challenges for previous staff and attendance and achievement scores were problematic. Through the use of Berry Street strategies such as unconditional positive regard and brain breaks, I built relationships around trust and respect. We built healthy boundaries with the use of our SWPBS system and had a strong emphasis on the implementation of the 4 R's program. I greet every student by name, every day and they know they have autonomy over themselves, their bodies and how they learn best. Students in my classroom know that I create a safe environment, and I value their happiness. If they feel both safe and happy, they will be more able to learn. All of this, along with self regulation and positive coping strategies are a core component of how I've been able to achieve the outcomes listed below:

* Improvement of 39% in attendance for Student A as compared with same time last year (Tracked data)

*School "cant" for Student B mitigated from a daily refusal with physical support required from parent (Term 1), to daily compliance without the need for physical support (Term 3).

* Student interruptions from whole class during instruction time reduced from in excess of 30 per session to less than 5 per session (Tracked data)

* Student C is now in the classroom for greater than 80% of the school day, as compared with less than 20% at the same time last year (Teacher observations)

2. Improved literacy data for targeted students 

The relatively recent "Science of reading," evidence based approach to teaching literacy has been instrumental in the design and delivery of my literacy program. I feel proud of my contribution to helping our school transition to evidence based programs, such as LLLL and Spelling Mastery. I have also worked in collaboration with colleagues to increase our tracking of student writing through moderated writing assessments based around the 6 plus one traits of writing program. The improvement in student data has been evident through all methods of assessment. Our NAPLAN results have been particularly rewarding, with a high percentage of our students achieving above state averages in writing. 

As a springboard for creating meaningful writing opportunities, I always begin my writing for the year with a community based task involving our local animal shelter. Using the profiles of the animals that are available for adoption, I randomly allocate a pet to each of my students and their task is to write a persuasive piece for any potential adoptees of their allocated pet. I then forward the profiles to the local shelter for them to use to help finding homes for the animals. This program has been so successful and so well received that the shelter have approached me to expand upon our schools involvement into a "reading to animals" program. I'm currently negotiating with them what that might look like and feel very excited about this exciting opportunity for our students and greater community. In addition to this, student writing pieces are also selected for publication in our local newspaper and have been a great motivator for writing for the students. Feedback from the parent and greater community has been overwhelmingly positive. 

At an individual student level and through the use of evidence based programs, as well as some targeted support, I have been able to facilitate a greater than 12 month improvement in literacy scores, in a period of 6 months for Student D. Student D entered grade 4 at the beginning of this year achieving a level of 2.5 for Reading, Writing and Speaking & Listening. He was significantly behind after a year of disengagement and problematic behaviour management strategies. I established a positive relationship with this student and built his self-regulation strategies. We implemented Spelling Mastery, Phonic based Word of the day tasks, StepsWeb and targeted writing support. Most recent testing indicates Student D is now at level (3.5) in all areas of literacy, and my view is that he will continue this achievement trajectory and has the potential to achieve above level in this area within the next 12 months.  

Also within my class, I have two grade 3 Students I suspect as having an SLD in  writing. Our phonics based approach has been particularly crucial to their achievement scores. Targeted support has significantly improved outcomes for both students and our moderated writing data shows both have improved from being 12 months behind at the beginning of the year, to 6 months behind in Term 3. In addition to the programs listed above for Student D, these students also benefited from an online HandwritingBot program, as well as daily handwriting and dictation tasks, choral reading practise and daily expanded sentence tasks. Both students require ongoing support, but their confidence and ability to achieve independently has been evident through testing and observation. 

3. Whole school and class based focus on First Nations content

One of the roles I undertake at school, in addition to my classroom teaching duties is as our schools representative for our local First Nations learning community with Nalderun. Part of my role involves working closely with other schools and the CEO of Naldurun to ensure that our school is providing meaningful content to all students, in the area of Indigenous culture, heritage and history. Within my class I strive to relate all of my learning to Indigenous perspectives. This year, within my own class I have:

*Guided my class to write their own Acknowledgement of country

*Led a project on Indigenous leaders where students researched and created a class display of their chosen leader

*Used images of native animals (flocks of birds) as a basis for subitising in maths and creating stories to explain their patterns and behaviour with number that would have been relevant to FN's people

*Undertook an off campus walk for "Clean up Australia" day where we removed rubbish from our local creek

*Used the text "My Place" by Nadia Wheatley to do a whole term deep dive into First Nations history since colonisation. 

*Integrated local seasons into our science-based learning

*Used the text "Bindi" to explore poetry and themes such as land management and habitat destruction impacting native birds. Through this we undertook a class based planting activity to restore the number of she-oak trees for black cockatoos. The plan is to distribute the germinated saplings to our school community for planting in our local area

This year, for our school I have co-ordinated a week long event schedule for our schools involvement and participation in Reconciliation week. This looked like:

-a walk for the grade 2/3 students to our local market building for a guided tour of Boorp Boorp Bundyil, a local indigenous culture exhibition

-a whole school, student led indigenous games day run by our 5/6 class 

-Selected student attendance and involvement in our community Reconciliation week ceremony

-"Wear it yellow" day in conjunction with a local First nations educator coming to our school to run a collaborative art project

-Facilitating grade 5 attendance to our community led "walk for reconciliation" 

-Student contribution to learning content that is viewed on the walk for reconciliation

-A walk to our local market building to participate in a community based performance of "Solid Rock" with Shane Howard, the songs writer. A video of the event can be viewed here.