Professional Culture and Growth

Navigating Scales of Shift – Team Based Culture 

In our Team Based Culture staff meeting last week, we discussed the elephant in the room – the changes that teachers and students are facing as a result of the COVID Pandemic and the impacts of Remote Learning. These are what we call Scales of Shift – changes in our society that already existed but seem to have accelerated because of the COVID Pandemic lockdowns.

As a staff, we particularly focused on 3 Scales of Shift - Mental Health, Cyberbullying and War and Conflict. No doubt, we have all seen the over saturation of media coverage on the conflicts that are currently occurring. These 3 Scales of Shift have greatly impacted us as a society, and we are seeing these changes in our students. Whilst we cannot stem or reverse the change, we workshopped as a staff how we can move forward to support our students to navigate these changes. 

The two main questions that staff focused on were:

1. Where has the impact been felt?
2. What was/could be our strategic response?

Overwhelmingly, the response to the first question were in the classroom and on the yard. Our students are connected 24/7 through social media platforms, emails, and online gaming devices. The saturation of information, fake news, personal opinions, beauty tutorials, advertisements and direct messages means that we can no longer focus on tasks for too long before needing that “hit” of technology. Being able to concentrate in class for a lesson or compete a homework task for anything longer than 15 minutes is now a challenge not only for our students, but for many adults. How can we respond to this?

Responses to question two focused on how we can change our teaching practices to be able to respond to these changes in how our students focus and learn in the classroom. Ultimately, short, and sharp delivery of content with the lesson broken up into small activities or sections is an approach that responds the challenges of keeping students focused and engaged for 60 minutes.

Open and honest discussion addressing these scales of shift was also discussed. Our students need to know that not everything they see and hear on technology is accurate and that switching off and having time “tech-free” is so important for our mental health and wellbeing. Education is our best resource, and we encourage all our parents and guardians to continue to have these important conversations with our young people to support them through this time of change.

Georgie Erpisimidis

Deputy Principal – Professional Culture and Growth