van Leeuwen and Humphrey (1996) frame an important  goal for your language pedagogy: 
 

The role of the language teacher is various. It might be considered from three basic perspectives:

• Roles and responsibilities within the organisation of the school
• Roles and responsibilities within the community
• Roles and responsibilities within the classroom

• Your roles and responsibilities will be limited if you are have been appointed to a New South Wales public school as a part-time casual teacher in a school with a small Non-English Speaking Background population.
• You will have extensive roles and responsibilities if you have been appointed to a full-time, permanent, executive position, perhaps as a Leading Teacher, in a large school with a high NESB population.
• If your appointment is at an international school, perhaps in Asia, the you will need to understand the expectations of your employing body and your school or college executive. You will need to work within the policies, philosophies and practices of your host culture. You may have the responsibility of co-teaching, but with restricted opportunity to contribute to planning.

We may be more accomplished at reading the covert signs within a home culture, or an adopted home culture, than in an unfamiliar culture, but it can still be difficult. If we are not in our home culture or our adopted home culture, we should act with special reserve, even when we think we are beginning to feel understand.
  Agent for change - negotiator, planner, adviser

• NSW Department of Education and Training ESL Frameworks (in development)
• NSW Department and Training Literacy Policies and Strategies (1997-2001)
• (Materials are available on line across the curriculum areas)
• ESL Scales
• Recommendations for using ESL scales at different Stages in the K-6 English Syllabus
• Available online
• These are useful in matching achievement stages in curriculum areas to English language proficiency
• NSW Board of Studies Higher School Certificate ESL English
• Available online:
• Special needs in the main stream policies
• National policies, such as Gender Equity Strategy (1996-2001)

• There may be materials you know would serve your students well,
• there may be ways of organising your teaching contributions which you feel would be worth at least trying.
• For example,
• students have been in withdrawal classes and you can see advantages to working within the curriculum areas as a support, or co-teacher in the classroom
• you may feel there are ways of approaching language teaching which would be helpful for your colleagues to know
• there may be the possibility of an inservice program which would give teaching colleagues some valuable approaches to language and literacy development in their classrooms

• Think about ways of negotiating, of presenting possibilities and waiting for responses;
• Recognise and offer negotiating points and offer something in return;
• If the problem is to do with the budget, consider how your allocations might be distributed differently, so that the materials might be purchased, or the inservice provided;
• Offer to present a brief language teaching seminar in a staff meeting;
• If you wish to make changes to teaching practices while co-teaching suggest an action-research approach to evaluate the change.

Whatever the situation of your appointment you are likely to have some responsibility for resource development. You will need to assess what your responsibilities are and how they might best be achieved. Keeping up with reading in your field is a foundation. It is most important to keep your resource development within a consistent sociocultural pedagogy which takes account of multiliteracies.
 

There is much to be said for all teachers to work within a teaching-research pedagogy. Research, as evaluation should be pat of a teaching-learning cycle. This is small, local, pedagogic evaluation research, which can be conducted with willing colleagues in co-teaching situations. If you do anything more developed then there are ethical protocols to be considered.

 

Take time to profile and evaluate the school roles and responsibilities of your current appointment .