From the Principal

Whole School Assembly

It was incredibly moving to hold our first whole-school assembly in thirty years last week. The sense of pride in seeing our whole community together was palpable, and our student speakers are to be commended for their exceptional efforts on the day. Our choir and jazz orchestra were also in fine form: some students even described the experience as being a little like a 'music festival'! We have precious few opportunities to publically celebrate our shared values, and we honoured all of them when we came together. We're looking forward to the next one when we farewell our Year 12s at the end of the year. We are sure this will steadily become a school tradition. A huge thank you to all the people behind the scenes who made it happen, especially our facilities team lead by Jocelyn Hill and John Scott, and our AV support in Lincoln LeFevre. You can read more about the event - and see some incredible photos - further in this newsletter.

Celebrating William Cooper

For a couple of years now there has been some passionate interest in renaming Batman House. During the whole school assembly last week we officially changed the name of Batman House to become Cooper House. This is part of reinvigorating and strengthening our students’ engagement with our house system and sense of community. The change also reflects the recent re-naming of the federal electorate our school is in to Cooper.

William Cooper was an inspirational Aboriginal leader in New South Wales and Victoria in the early part of the 20th century and a founding secretary of the Australian Aborigines’ League. He inspired generations of activists working for justice for Indigenous Australians.

Our school values of Humanity and Fairness are clearly represented in this change. We want all students to be proud of our school and our values. We will be working with students’ this year to plan for increased participation and connection to our community through the house system, unique year level experiences and co-curricular opportunities.

Captains' Conference

This week we will host our first Captains' Conference for 2020. All school captains have been invited to participate in a half day workshop designed to get to know each other, learn about student leadership and plan for whole school and year level projects in 2020. The captains are very excited to be working with our school community and have already started planning to get valuable feedback and ideas from students. See further in this newsletter for details of our 2020 captains.

Parent Connect

We have enjoyed connecting with parents in Years 7, 8, 9, 10 and 12 over the last couple of weeks at our Parent Connect / Workshop / Meet and Greet sessions. It's great to have staff and parents gather informally, chat about our common goal (the students - your children) and share information to support success this year. We have two more events coming up: the Year 11 Parent Forum this Wednesday, and our grand Year 7 Family Picnic on Wednesday 26 February. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Professional learning: student agency and developmental thinking

A key focus of the school in 2020 in relation to our Teaching and Learning is developing student agency:  enabling students to be active participants in, and feel ownership over, their learning. One way in which this can occur is providing rubrics and developmental progressions that identify clear points of progression in skills, knowledge and understanding, in a way that students can engage with so they can identify what they need to do next in their learning. In this way learning is recognised as occurring on continuum, and at any point is a stage of development, building to the next point. Learning also becomes about continuous progress and improvement, not just static measures of achievement. These ideas of developmental thinking and constructing developmental rubrics was the focus of staff professional learning held before students returned to school.

The keynote address was presented by an external consultant and expert in this area, Bronwyn Ryrie Jones. Teachers found the presentation highly informative and provided a strong foundation for how our staff will work collaboratively to pair easy to understand assessment tools with evidence-informed approaches to instruction. Bronwyn will be working with all teachers in Faculties throughout the year to further develop our expertise in developmental thinking and the construction of developmental rubrics as part of our Annual Implementation Plan.

Year 7 Northcote Model: supporting transition

The school was pleased to welcome the 2020 Year 7s to our Northcote High School community.  A key part of our revised Year 7 curriculum implemented this year is the two-day transition program.  These two days were largely spent with the Connect teacher and Year 10 Program Support Leaders.  The aim of the program is to support the Year 7s to feel connected with their tutor and peers; begin to set up personalised room displays; understand what learning at Northcote looks like; and what co-curricular and student-led clubs are on offer.  Sorting out lockers, reading the timetable and finding the right rooms are also critical to these two days!

Another feature of our 2020 Year 7 curriculum is that students have fewer teachers, but more time with those teachers.   We want the Year 7s to feel ‘known’ – from their interests to how they learn best.  By having one teacher for English/Humanities and one teacher for Maths/Science, we can better understand their individual learning needs.  We can also help the students make connections between the subjects.   We look forward, over the course of Semester One, to developing the student’s capabilities in using a range of thinking routines,  visible thinking tools and the school’s Inquiry Model to problem-solve and be aware of how they learn.

NHS on the airwaves

We were delighted to be invited to take part in ABC Melbourne (774)'s Conversation Hour with Richelle Hunt and Warwick Long. Rebekah Keenan Mount and students Kitty Robinson and Lachie Maclean joined me on the air, and the live broadcast was from our Library. If you missed it, you can listen back on the ABC website or app: https://www.abc.net.au/radio/melbourne/programs/theconversationhour/the-conversation-hour/11930400