The Labours of Ron Barton

My Year 8s are currently studying myths and I got to wondering what my resume would look like as a Herculean story. Yes, I’m that weird. Anyway, here it is:

Once upon a time, several years ago, there was a young man who wasn’t very good at school. His name was Ron Barton. He was clever, there was no doubt about that – he was in PEAC in his youth and was in and out of extension classes during high school – but he was disengaged and disinterested when it came to learning.

    Then, one day, he had a meeting with an oracle of sorts. Her proper title was year coordinator but she acted like she knew all and could tell the future. When Ron said he would like to be a teacher when he grew up she laughed. He was determined though, and someone telling him he couldn’t do something was exactly what this rebellious teenager needed. 

    As he matured, Ron decided he didn’t want to be just a teacher, he wanted to be a damn good one. In the process of earning his teaching degree Ron had many mentors. One saw his potential and informed him that he would need to complete many labours if he wanted to be known as an inspirational educator. She set him on the path to demonstrating his Professional Knowledge, Professional Practice and Professional Engagement.

    Before Ron had a chance to engage with his passion (English) he first had to prove that he was capable of teaching outside of his area of expertise. Already disadvantaged by his lack of subject knowledge, Ron was also hindered by physical injury. Despite having never studied it at university, Ron’s first challenge was to teach Physical Education while on crutches – he had broken his leg playing amatuer basketball. Fortunately, he was a passionate educator. He understood that there are many ways to foster a productive and enjoyable learning environment and that letting your passion show (whether it’s a love for the subject area, topic of discussion, the role teachers play in shaping today’s youth, or kids in general) is integral to getting the students onboard. He learned as he went too, and this held him in good stead for years later when he would teach HASS, Science and Mathematics. Despite having no interest in these subjects, Ron was able to drag students towards success due to his love of teaching. Much of this came while he was running a Senior School Engagement Program and the data highlighted his impact – for these wayward students, Ron’s guidance saw them decrease the amount of suspension they received despite the fact they were also attending school more frequently than they ever had.

    This wasn’t enough though. Ron’s true passion was English and he hadn’t yet had a chance to demonstrate all that he could do in that space. His second challenge was to take a subject many students disliked and turn it into something they saw value in. The problem was that many students didn’t see the point in “studying something [they] already speak” nor did they see how studying novels and such might help them in the future. In fact, many students only did English because they had to. As such, Ron’s task mirrored that of Sisyphus or a dung beetle – in that he always felt like he was pushing shit uphill. To combat this, he tried to make tasks more authentic. Where he could, he would provide real world relevance, and where he couldn’t, he would provide a real world audience. Ron’s students then performed poetry at the Perth Poetry Festival (2012), spoke at TEDxYouth@CBC, collaborated with WA police, connected with writers and illustrators at the Young Writers’ Festival, posted film trailers on YouTube, wrote for and read to local primary schools, and corresponded with school kids on the other side of the world. English became a subject students loved as much as Ron did. It had value for them where previously it didn’t.

    Still, Ron wanted more. His students were learning, but were they performing as well as they possibly could? Ron was worried that his own expertise was putting a ceiling on what his students could achieve. Data suggested that the GAT students he worked with had setbacks as they entered Years 11 and 12. Part of this, Ron surmised, was that they were an isolated group throughout lower school and that the social-emotional challenges of integrating with other students impacted their academic performance. He also felt that, perhaps, there were gaps in both his own knowledge and the programs themselves. As such, he attacked like the hydra, using multiple fronts. First, he visited Perth Modern School to shadow Rod Quinn. Perth Mod is the Athens of Western Australia, a centre for excellence in academia, and Rod (with his multiple textbooks) is a modern day Apollo. This endeavour, along with completing the GERRIC modules, armed Ron with strategies for engaging and extending gifted students. Then, he and another staff member, combined Year 10 classes. What this did was create a more flexible, dynamic learning environment. Students received direct instruction from two teachers with two distinctively different teaching styles, worked in groups whose members featured greater variety than one class could afford and learnt in a number of different physical settings. Ron learned from the other teacher and, in return, the other teacher learned from Ron – each complimenting the other person’s style and compensating for their weaknesses. Finally, Ron overhauled the lower school programs to ensure that they were backward mapped from the upper school curriculum. The culmination of this was that in 2018, Comet Bay College had the best ATAR results in its history with many students having Literature (Ron’s class) as their 1st or 2nd highest scoring subject.

    Still Ron wanted more. For his fourth labour he became a foundation member of a ground-breaking partnership with his school and its feeder primaries. This allowed him to extend his influence beyond the students directly under his care. By inputting into the primary schools’ curriculum and the way they taught it, Ron facilitated a smoother transition for students entering high school. His fifth labour saw him surveying staff and students to determine their impressions of the working and learning environment at his school. He then led conversations with staff about their classroom practice and with school leaders about the school’s identity and ethos.

These conversations saw Ron look for more opportunities to develop his own classroom practice further. For his sixth challenge he engaged in professional development around Classroom Management and Instructional Strategies, as well as his school’s own version of this – the Advanced Instructional Intelligence Program. This included an opportunity to learn from Barrie Bennett himself. These processes involved classroom walkthroughs where Ron was the subject of observation, where he watched others, and where he led staff through walkthroughs and corresponding conversations. It is experiences like these that helped Ron develop his skill set which, in turn, has led to some of his greatest successes in the classroom. In 2017, one of his Literature students had a scaled score of 100 in her WACE exam and another had a scaled score of 94 despite being three years younger than her peers due to grade skipping.

Having taught for 16 years now, both within and outside of his training, Ron has developed confidence in his ability to provide quality education for my students. He puts everything he has into being the best educator and provider that he can be, recognising that part of that must include looking beyond himself into the rest of the learning environment and making whatever improvements and adjustments he can.

As the years pass, he continues to be an opinion leader, seeking out innovative practices in the development of student capacity, modelling for other staff and mentoring them in their own approaches. He has become a well-respected colleague and a confident communicator, able to adapt information and deliver it in a clear, concise and articulate manner.

He approaches all of these endeavours with the desire to increase the success of his students. He hopes that they know his heart is in the right place, that he wants the best for all of them.

What will the future hold for Ron Barton? Will his image be replicated in the stars? Only time will tell.