From the Principal
Years 9 & 10 students setting off on the orientation camp
Orienting ourselves for the year ahead
Rather than launching straight into timetabled classes over the first two days back at school, this year the teachers at Blackhall Kalimna worked together to run a special program aimed to reinforce those aspects of Preshil that we want to see preserved and strengthened.
The motivation for this came from teachers who want to support each of our students to set ambitious goals for themselves for their learning. Everyone has different strengths, interests, aspirations and areas of difficulty. Helping students to identify these elements and develop strategies to measure their progress aligns perfectly with the IB Learner Profile and Approaches to Learning.
A major focus for the Secondary School this year is to enhance our capacity for reflection and feedback. This focus is for students and teachers alike, in opening up formal and informal channels for teachers to find ever more effective methods and opportunities to give students feedback on their progress and, just as importantly, to seek feedback from the students on how they see their learning needs being met. The IB expects students to be able to reflect critically on their efforts, so it is essential that as teachers we can model and teach this key skill. Being able to reflect on the success of a project lies at the heart of independent learning and sets students up for ongoing success when they have mastered it.
Students also had the time to join with others in developing projects to address issues of specific interest to their group. These projects might be efforts to address specific school issues, assist with identified needs in the community or lend support to some bigger cause. We encourage all students to speak out and to question aspects of their world, to take action and to be active in seeking improvement, however small or ambitious. To experience empowerment and genuine agency in making a difference sets our students up for a different way of responding to crises other than simply registering outrage, the modus operandi of social media.
Another key focus during the first two days of the term was on shaping classroom agreements. Ideally students learn to articulate the underpinning values that allow student interactions with each other and with their teachers to flourish. Trust, mutual respect, acceptance and kindness are some of the elements that serve to create the atmosphere and relationships that characterise Preshil at its best. Fear, ridicule, punishment, failure and shame are all enemies of genuinely rich learning. The group process of arriving at an agreed set of understandings is a productive, if demanding, one.
This orientation program stands in marked contrast to the thousands of students returning to schools where unquestioning obedience and compliance characterises the relationships between students and their teachers - the traditional model of ‘them and us’.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent on surveillance systems, security cameras and storage systems to prevent students from accessing their mobile phones.
“They’ve embraced it, I wouldn’t say wholeheartedly and enthusiastically, but they’ve accepted that this is the way things are now” reported a State School Principal in a recent newspaper article.
As a society it seems that too many of us have ‘accepted that this is the way things are now’ even when we are appalled at examples of political and institutional corruption, secrecy and invasions of privacy. It is concerning to think that our schools are the training grounds for the passive surrendering of freedom and rights, without consultation, without question or redress.
Marilyn Smith
Principal