Burnie Campus Principal

As this article goes out, we are rolling into the Easter weekend which is such a special time in the life of the school and on the Christian calendar.  As a Christian school we always keep Christ at the centre of what we do and plan, but at Easter we take a deliberate pause to remember Him and what He did for each of us on the cross of Calvary through His death, burial and resurrection. Why not take some time to connect with others in your local Christian community and Church to hear more of this story?

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been at the CEN Principal and Executives Conference, the CEN National Conference and AGM in Sydney and the Science of Learning Conference in Hobart.

It is always difficult to take time away from school, and when I do, it needs to be purposeful, engaging, educational and develop me in some way, including my leadership skills, spiritual development and capacity as a Principal. Although these three conferences have been very different from each other, there have been some purposeful threads through them.

Firstly, teaching is a complex, challenging, rewarding, taxing and fulfilling calling where passionate educators get to be on the front line to see lives changed through personalised, targeted, engaged teaching. As wonderful as this profession is, Australia is in the middle of a nation-wide shortage of teachers and university students going into the teaching profession. One of the main reasons this is happening is because of the changing landscape of education and the demands on our teaching staff.

Secondly, we are partnering with families to educate their children in a world that is constantly changing. It is possible that in primary school we are preparing students for careers and a life that we just can’t yet imagine. The impact of this on our young people can see computer algorithms raising our children, forming their world view and sense of self through an online connected world that can be both exhilarating and terrifying. The longer a child spends online, the more the algorithm learns about them, and then more that it targets content for that person. When I stopped to think about this, it could have terrifying consequences in the forming of each little person. We need to be vigilant about what our children are watching, playing and engaging with online.

The third conference was all about the science of learning and reading. We spent two days learning about the brain, how it works and is developed in our young people, and what we need to have in place to ensure we develop little ones who can confidently read and make sense of the world around them. The first three years is critical in the teaching and learning of reading and this has informed our appointment of Jocelyn Seamer as our literacy coach and guide in the early years. Staff begin face to face training with her on Thursday this week and have already been working through some of her online training modules. Being at this particular conference cemented that we are definitely on the right path with our literacy rollout at both Ulverstone and Burnie.

Educators should continue to be lifelong learners; we need to be on a constant learning journey to model this for our students, to allow research and data to inform what we are doing and implementing in our schools.

Teaching is a wonderful career and at Leighland we want to release our teachers to relish play in the classroom, to establish a variety of learning environments in their rooms, begin to plan for project-based learning in the upper primary and embrace students' areas of interest to embed these in their learning. These things all lead to engaged students in the classroom and with their learning; isn’t that what we all want?

Mrs Elizabeth Scheu

Burnie Campus Principal