From the Principal
Searching for the road on the map…
I am sure many of us are struggling with feelings of disappointment and dismay following the news that secondary students in Years 7 to 10 will continue to learn online for at least the first several weeks of Term 4 and conceivably for the remainder of the school year. For adolescents who need the interaction of peers in order to forge their developing identities as young adults, the prospect of continued isolation and social restrictions is especially hard. Together with the concern so many of us have about a program inevitably reliant on screen time, it is truly dispiriting.
Rather than add to the debate around the efficacy of the roadmap out of the COVID-19 lockdown, our task at Blackhall Kalimna is to move straight on to planning the best program we can for Term 4, finding new ways to further improve the elements we have found to be most successful for each specific year level.
Our team of Secondary School teachers, led by Dan Symons, is exceptional. They have shown themselves to be inventive, adaptive and deeply committed professionals. Isolation has been difficult for people who have chosen a profession where they interact with dozens of young adults, as well as their colleagues, everyday and the new requirements of online learning do not lessen the demands on them. But even in this isolation, they have shown how much they care about each one of their students. We have always claimed that Preshil is based on the strong relationship between teacher and student and this fundamental value has underpinned our online learning as significantly as in face to face teaching.
The recent 3-way conferences were a very satisfying acknowledgement of their outstanding work. Having trialled Zoom out of necessity, it is unlikely we will revert to the traditional arrangements of, to some, fraught onsite interviews - searching for unusually named rooms, negotiating Harry Potter-like stairs, waiting in often draughty passageways and missing appointments that are running late anyway... Who knew we could all just stay home and achieve a better result?
In planning a program for Term 4 we will build on feedback from students and parents, so please continue to engage, to communicate and encourage your children to let their teachers know what they need and what is working for them.
We are also deeply aware that 2021 will be a year where any ground lost and damage suffered due to the pandemic will need to be actively redressed. No one here is under any illusion that 2021 will ‘snap back’!
A major priority for Term 4 is supporting our Year 10 students through the transition into their IB Diploma studies. We are developing a program to be staged over several weeks which will actively target key skills, offer opportunities for catch up and consolidation as well as start an introduction and orientation program for both the Diploma Core and subject courses. As with Year 10 students undertaking VCE studies, we have every confidence that this program can be run on campus.
There are so many positive new solutions and responses that have been adopted this year and it is exciting to look forward to repurposing them in the face to face context we are so looking forward to. Teaching strategies, technological solutions, software and innovative timetabling have all shown us that education needs to evolve responsively to changed circumstances.
One key aspect of learning has been the individuality and difference of every student. This is highlighted online much more clearly than when students are gathered into groups and where individual needs, preferences and interests are given less scope for expression. This is an aspect of the School which we are keen to harness more effectively through the ongoing development of every student’s Individual Learning Agreement. These Agreements will enable each student and their teachers to identify ‘COVID gaps’, areas of difficulty and specific goals for individual challenge and achievement.
Another recent success, which we are eager to expand on, has been the Interdisciplinary Units (IDUs) initiated at Years 7 and 8.
Building interdisciplinary thinking, the capacity for critical thinking and creative problem-solving are integral to each of the IB programmes from primary school through secondary. Preshil is committed to building this strand of the MYP; thinking and collaborating across the artificial barriers of disciplines represents a key component in tertiary studies and is fundamental to solving the pressing needs of our future world.
In a recent book review of Toby Ord’s ‘The Precipice’, Anna Goldsworthy writes about the existential crisis facing humanity and the ‘multiple strands of human knowledge’ needed to avert disaster.
‘Understanding the risks requires delving into physics, biology, earth science and computer science; situating this in the larger story of humanity requires history and anthropology; discerning just how much is at stake requires moral philosophy and economics; and finding solutions requires international relations and political science.’
Goldsworthy goes on to write: ‘The pandemic has provided a foretaste of the crises to come, and it has been instructive to witness the difference between a leadership that fosters cooperation (Ardern) and a leadership that promotes divisiveness (Trump).
The teams of teachers, collaborating online to design these units, are to be congratulated. In fostering student agency through interdisciplinary projects we state our optimism in a future where students have the wisdom and the capacity to solve the problems they will have inherited.
Marilyn Smith
Principal