Hey everyone,
Some of the more exciting activities that I have been involved with this week at the Department of Education and Training have been tagging along with and sitting in on photo shoots for upcoming newsletters and promotional brochures. This week I have been lucky enough to have been given the opportunity to tag along with Melissa from Teacher retention to a photo shoot held at three public school’s across Perth highlighting and promoting Teacher career pathways. For primary and secondary school teachers there are three levels of professional career development that can be attained through promotion that have substantially higher compensation packages. To gain promotion the teacher must show exceptional performance and ability as well as fulfilling several specific criterions, the highest level achievable for a teacher is level three.
Melissa and I visited three schools’ Mt Lawley Secondary, Atwell Primary and South Perth Primary School, and with a professional photographer took some happy snaps with teachers at those schools that had completed the process and achieved their level three promotion. The photos will be used in a promotional brochure to be produced highlighting the steps required for teachers to gain their level three career development promotion. I got to talk to the teachers the photographer and learnt a lot about teacher retention and the problems with keeping teachers in the school system. Attrition rates in teaching are at about 30 per cent which is ridiculous for a modern day white collar profession and is one of the biggest challenges facing the education department. The idea behind the brochure is that if Teachers can see positive career advancement opportunities that have appropriate and rewarding monetary benefits they will be encouraged to engage in additional education programs and training.
I also went to SciTech this week to Interview Ashdale Secondary School students who over the last several weeks have been visiting SciTech one day a week for their science studies. Ashdale Secondary School is a new school and does not have fully completed Science facilities. I was given the task of interviewing the students and compiling a draft story of the learning partnership between the two organisations to be featured in an upcoming issue of School Matters, the DET internal newsletter for internal stakeholders. I spent over two hours at SciTech and got to sit in on one of the Science classes held in the SciTech lab and learning workshop.
It has all been fantastic experience this week and not to mention exciting getting out of the office, meeting people, making contacts and being involved in some of the more glamorous aspects to PR. The whole SciTech partnership with Ashdale Secondary has been a hugely positive PR story that the department has spun to the press and it was very interesting to be involved on the ground floor in that story. Getting close to the end of my time at DET and I will really miss it, I have been so lucky and experienced so many great things.
Well I think that quite enough for this week, I’ll speak to you all soon.
Cheers and regards,
Luke. 13115230
1 comment:
Hi Luke,
Experiencing the PR in its true glory would be its variety. That is why it is such a great profession. As you said, it was exciting to be involved with a range of different experiences from photo shoot to science experiments. Especially the photo shoots, I enjoy those, as I worked as an assistant photographer some years back. As you mentioned, you have learned and experienced so many great things during your internship that you will miss it and consider yourself lucky to be part of it. You are even luckier now that, soon enough, you are going to do all those things as a professional. Don’t forget that if variety is what you like chose consulting. In-house PR professional has it as well but not as much. That is my opinion only : )
Violeta
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