About the school
Teach For Portugal has existed since 2018, and is part of the international Teach For All network, which has been operating for over 30 years in 59 countries. The organisation works to tackle educational inequality, by recruiting and training fellows to provide additional support in schools that serve the most underprivileged communities in the country. Teach For Portugal fellows act as an additional resource working with teachers in classrooms, with specific training in creating an environment that promotes learning and ensures that every single student is supported to learn effectively.
“We chose BlueSky because it supports our focus on leadership development for our professional fellows. It allows us to map the path of learning that we want our trainee fellows to follow, and it connects everything to the competencies that we need them to develop.”
Maria Azevedo
Head of Training, Teach For Portugal
Why did Teach For Portugal choose BlueSky?
As a partner of the global not-for-profit organisation Teach for All, Teach For Portugal followed the example of Teach First in the UK when it introduced BlueSky in 2020.
“We share knowledge and good practice within the network. In our first year of operation, we heard about BlueSky through Teach First in the UK,” explains Maria Azevedo, Head of Training.
“We chose BlueSky because it supports our focus on leadership development for our professional fellows. It allows us to map the path of learning that we want our trainee fellows to follow, and it connects everything to the competencies that we need them to develop.”
“We emphasise that we’re not going to be good educators if we’re not focusing on our own development, and BlueSky is the platform that allows us to make that possible.”
How does BlueSky support Teach For Portugal?
BlueSky underpins the practice of self-reflection and assessment which is key to Teach For Portugal’s professional fellow training programme, says Maria: “BlueSky allows us to put the focus on self-development, rather than on the training programme. The programme serves their self-development.”
The trainee fellows are encouraged to regularly self-assess themselves against the Teach For Portugal competencies, which are set up as a bespoke framework in BlueSky. The trainees identify and create specific objectives, which align with priorities at each phase of the two-year leadership development programme.
“We allow the trainees to define their objectives and how they will be achieved according to their own preference – some like short-term objectives, while others like to have long-term objectives, but they need to have checkpoints. BlueSky is flexible so it supports our trainees to define their own way of working.”
“We also put all of the training resources in BlueSky after the sessions, so the trainees can access what they need at every stage of the programme, whenever they want” says Maria.
Monthly one-on-one coaching conversations allow them to further explore their objectives and ensure they are aligned with the programme, then they have a ‘step back’ meeting every six months to review the previous six months and plan for the next. Every meeting is documented in BlueSky, allowing the trainee fellows, and their supervisors, to reflect on previous conversations and keep track of their progress at every step.
To support the focus on self-development, the Teach For Portugal programme also uses journaling. “Our trainee fellows do monthly Journals which they share with their supervisors through BlueSky,” says Maria. “This not only promotes reflection, but also gives them clear evidence of progression. They can go back and compare what they thought about their practice six months ago with what they think now.”
The trainee fellow’s progress is evaluated through regular classroom observations, with feedback shared through BlueSky, which means it is easily linked to specific objectives. “Every month we review how they have developed that specific objective, for example pedagogical objectives will be reviewed in the next observation” Maria explains. “The whole process is cyclical, with each piece of feedback informing the next cycle of work.”
What is the impact?
“For organising and being able to structure our programme around our trainee fellow’s development, BlueSky is a very useful tool,” says Maria. “We can easily review the self-assessment and feedback from trainees and that supports our decision making in terms of designing the ongoing programme.”
“As a team, BlueSky allows different team members to access the same information, which makes communication much simpler. Each trainee has one-on-one support from both a pedagogical tutor and a leadership development tutor, so being able to exchange information is extremely useful.
“From one year to the next, they might have new tutors, so having all of the information about each trainee in one place, where it is structured and linked to all of their professional development, helps to keep everyone up to date and engaged.”
“The biggest advantage of BlueSky is the focus that it puts on an individual’s development as the object of the programme, rather than on the training. That makes a difference because it’s all about them – we just create opportunities to support their development.”
