Wawa, Wominjika.

Here at Old Orchard Primary School, we acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land we visit each day, the Wurundjeri Woi-Wurru people of the Kulin nation.We acknowledge and respect the elders and leaders past and present and the elders and leaders of all of the cultures and nationalities that are part of the Old Orchard Primary School community.We express our gratitude towards the orchards that were kept in place by the peoples on this land before us.We thank the traditional owners for sharing this beautiful land that we all love, and for keeping the land, sky, waterways and animals all in great condition for thousands of years, not only for themselves but for all the generations to come.

Pupil Free Day

Our Pupil Free Day last Friday was extremely productive, with staff working on our literacy program, specifically the Writers’ Workshop model. This is a well researched and evidence based approach to Writing and we will be gradually implementing it throughout 2024. Our teachers have visited other schools that already have the approach embedded in their practice and part of Friday’s work included them reporting back on what they saw on their visits and how we might implement some of this practice at Old Orchard. During the morning, our specialist staff visited other schools to see best practice in their particular specialist area. As teachers in primary schools, our specialists rarely have the opportunity to observe and engage with other specialist teachers in the same domain, so this experience was invaluable. Our Education Support staff spent much of the day helping to create our classroom libraries which our students will soon be able to enjoy.

Riversdale Network Principal Conference

Last week, Clare Murray, Jen McCann and I attended the Riversdale Network Principal Conference. The Riversdale Network is made up of all Government schools in Whitehorse and Boroondara and the conference was extremely well attended by Principals and Assistant Principals across the network. The program included some outstanding speakers:

Pasi Sahlberg is a highly regarded education expert who challenged us to consider what changes we can make within our schools that will elevate student engagement and ultimately student performance. It’s impossible to paraphrase a full day presentation in just few words, but some key points were:

Global trends in schools in the Western world show a steady increase in data on schools and cost per student, but a significant downward trend in equity & quality of outcomes and engagement & wellbeing.
The highest performing education systems are those that combine equity with quality.
Australia has a world-class school education - but not for everyone!
Australia has the highest compulsory instruction times of all 23 OECD countries, but is only mid range in academic performance (Average PISA score.)
A potential new direction to transform Australian schools would include Collaborative & collective autonomy, Whole student, whale school approach, Trust based teacher professionalism - leading to Healthy relationships, Agency & engagement, Deeper learning & understanding.
Consider what changes we can make in our schools, within the structure of a beurocracy, that will enhance student engagement, wellbeing & learning.

Kendra Parker & Simone Eirth from the Victorian Academy of Teaching & Leadership spoke about:

what high quality leadership looks like
the importance of developing self & others
five domains of leadership
building relational trust
leadership dispositions: open mindedness, interpersonal courage, empathy, perseverance

We also enjoyed engaging and powerful presentations from Chelsea Roffey, best known as an AFL Goal Umpire, and Simon Kuestenmacher.

The opportunity to hear from world class speakers and leaders and to connect with leaders from other schools at events such as these is invaluable - Clare, Jen and I will continue to work throughout the year to share out ‘takeaways’ and, in conjunction with our staff team, to seek opportunities to modify and build upon current practice as appropriate.

Newsletter re-branding

We are in the process of giving our newsletter a new name, something that is catchy, succinct and reflects our school’s history & culture. We would welcome any suggestions, which can be submitted by emailing Sheree at sheree.knight@education.vic.gov.au - could be a good family dinner table discussion.

Education Week

Education Week at Old Orchard will be held from May 13th - 17th. The theme this year is 'Spotlight on STEM', a chance for schools to celebrate and share how they bring science, technology, engineering, and maths to life in the classroom. We have some great activities planned and we hope to see many families in attendance across the week.

Prep Discovery

The Prep team will still host a Discovery Session open to only Prep parents on Tuesday 14th from 10:30am to 11:30am.

Open Evening

Old Orchard's Community Open Evening will be held from 5.00pm - 7.00pm on Thursday 16th May. For this event, teaching teams are asked to plan a task or an activity that can be streamed for all year levels, that fits in with the Education Week theme. The same activity will be set up in each of the level classrooms.

Healthy Harold

The Healthy Harold program is well underway and the feedback from students so far has been fantastic. Harold has been around for many years and the program plays a key role in educating our students about Health & Safety. The program includes:

Prep - Friend Ships

Year 1: Safety Rules

Year 2: Growing Good Friends

Year 3: The Inside Story

Year 4: Friends and Feelings

Year 5: Decisions

Year 6: Relate, Respect, Connect

Don’t forget to ask your children about their Healthy Harold experience and chat with them about what they have learnt. As an added bonus, Harold himself will be a special gust at Assembly tomorrow.

Student Safety

Earlier this week, I sent home an important update about student safety in our school. This was prompted by the scary incident at an inner suburban Melbourne school where a young girl was taken from her class by a stranger. Thankfully, the girl was located soon afterwards and returned to her family. Schools are extremely safe environments, but we can never take that for granted and we all share a responsibility for the safety of our students. If you haven’t already done so, please take a few minutes to read my email from April 29th.

Mothers’ Day morning tea

Don’t forget our special Mothers’ Day morning tea next Friday - we would love to see a huge turnout. Check your Sentral emails for details.

Violence against women

I am sure that all members of our school community have been horrified by the continued horrific incidents of violence against women, very often resulting in serious injury or death. We would be naive to think that our community is immune to this epidemic. As a school, our role is to educate all of our students in respecting others and treating them with care. Our Respectful Relationships program is a key element of our work in this space, but thinking that we can ‘teach’ respectful behaviour in discrete lessons is misguided. We must ensure that we encourage and reinforce positive behaviour and ‘call out’ poor behaviour and attitudes at every opportunity, while still responding at an age appropriate level.

We must help our boys to understand that ‘jokes’ about girls or women being less than equal are no longer acceptable - as men, we must set the bar very high.

We must also ensure that our students, but particularly our girls, have a voice and know that they can speak up - for too long this has not been the case in Australian society.

I am proud that several of our staff attended the rally in Melbourne last weekend and at a personal level am very proud that my own daughters attended this rally. Change is slow, but in this instance, change is urgent. We all have female family members, friends and co-workers and have a responsibility to shape a safer future for them all and a future in which our men (overall) will be more respectful and inclusive.

Kind regards

Duncan

Literacy