I Get By With A Little Help...Colleague Support in Schools, July/2006

In this book, Bill Rogers draws from his experience as a teacher, researcher and educational consultant to emphasise that colleague support can, and does, make a difference to individual teachers and to whole school cultures. He highlights the personal and relational aspects of colleague support, including moral support, structural support and professional support. In particular, he calls upon the voices of teachers and case studies to illustrate the moral, structural and professional dimensions of colleague support.

Bill Rogers argues that colleague support can affect wellbeing, professional esteem and professional coping. He asks the questions:

"What makes colleague support effective and why?"

"Who initiates support and how?"

"How does such support affect personal coping and the ability to manage the day to day grind of teaching?"

"How does colleague support affect longer term issues such as professional feedback, appraisal of teaching, curriculum planning, lesson planning, as well as ongoing concerns such as classroom discipline and behaviour management?"

"How does colleague support affect the impact and management of change?"

About The Author:
Bill Rogers is an education consultant. A teacher by profession, Bill now lectures widely on discipline and behaviour management issues, classroom management, stress and teaching, colleague support, developing peer-support programs for teachers and developing community-oriented policies for behaviour management, based on whole-school approaches. He works in every area of education (primary, post-primary and tertiary) conducting in-service programs for teachers, lecturing widely at Colleges of Education and Universities, working with parent groups and students in schools. He has taken seminars, in-services, lecture-programs and developed in-school workshops across Australasia, New-Zealand, U.K, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and Estonia; in the past thirty years.