From the Principal

Welcome to the final week of a ten-week term. Spring has sprung, football finals are in full swing, and families will be planning how to spend the two-week holiday period.

I have really enjoyed speaking with students at the end of term assemblies and celebrating their achievements throughout the term. A major highlight in these assemblies is the introduction of a musical item. Students have performed in front of their peers and with the support of our Instrumental Music coordinator Dominic Williams, they have provided a great atmosphere for the assemblies. Another initiative is to say the Acknowledgement of Country in English and French. This reflects the global community we have at Auburn. The focus of the assemblies has been to develop community spirit, better connectedness with one another and strategies to care for ourselves and others. Music, culture and story telling are effective vehicles to promote this focus.

The themes I use differ at each year level. I have spoken to the senior students about not overestimating what can be done each day, and not underestimating what can be done in a year, or a term. My aim is to give the students confidence to set specific, measurable, and achievable goals each day or week. This will manage their day to day to-do-list and mean that they are breaking down their knowledge construction and other areas of focus into manageable blocks. By improving 1% a day on a particular skill or habit, they can be 50% better by the time November exams come around. There is exponential learning that takes place in term 4, and so achievable goals and a sustainable effort will bring good improvement.

My junior school assembly speeches have focused on positive behaviour we want to see in our Auburn students. Our students all come from different backgrounds and have different personalities and strengths. The one thing they all have in common is that they wear our blazer and represent the Auburn emblem of the arrow and the motto of ‘Thinking Beyond’. The Auburn behaviour we want to see is based on the qualities of: making people feel safe, using positive language, making people around us better, building relationships, acknowledging difference and having a growth mindset. There are many occasions where people behave poorly towards us by making us feel guilty, blaming us for things, breaking down relationships and in some cases defaming, vilifying or harassing. The challenge in these cases is to respond in a way that displays positive behaviours. The strongest possible response is to stay true to your principles, and not to ‘double down’ and use the same language or behaviours as the person who has upset you. To assist the students with strategies there will be information provided in E4L classes and in some other targeted student programs. I want students to Think Beyond their current strategies and be involved in setting high standards of Auburn behaviour.

Over the past several years the “Teach the Teacher” forums have been an important part of our school’s professional learning. These sessions are facilitated by students across year levels, where they work with teams of teachers on analysing student data provided through Pivot and DET surveys. At our session last week, the focus was on strategies that help students connect better with respectful behaviours towards their teachers, peers and whole school . The students examined student feedback data from our recent PIVOT surveys and workshopped the session focusing on promoting respect, positive wellbeing and connectedness. Students explained their experiences in detail and the effective strategies they have been using, or have seen teachers role model. The work we are doing is unique as there are few schools that run sessions like this with their entire staff. It was obvious that there was trust, honesty, and transparency in discussions, where over 40 students and 60 teachers worked together. I would like to congratulate all students who presented and participated and Pauline Delhostal for leading this work on student agency at our school. I would

also like to thank all our teaching staff for their commitment and focus on increasing student voice and agency at our school.

RUOK? Week

RUOK? Week is a national week of action that reminds us that every day is the day to ask, ‘are you okay?’ Staff and students wore a splash of yellow on the day and raised awareness around the importance of promoting positive mental health in our community. We celebrated RUOK throughout the week and focused on student and staff wellbeing activities. The resources provided to staff and students were closely linked with our Auburn Learner Qualities of Creativity, Collaboration and Communication to support students in developing questions to ask their friends “RUOK?” Some of these resources were on “Different ways to ask RUOK?”, “What makes a good listener”, and “What support is available”. Thank you to our Wellbeing Team, Leadership team and all staff for all their work in putting these events together for our school community.

This is the last newsletter for Term 3 and I would like to provide a reminder that summer uniform must be worn in Term 4. Dobsons, and our second-hand uniform shop have all the items. I have also noticed that some students are not wearing the correct school shoes. Please be proactive in purchasing new shoes as this is a key element to the high standards of uniform that we expect.

I would like to wish all our families and staff, a safe and relaxing break over the September holidays. I will be visiting my parent's farm, playing some golf and tennis, and catching up with friends. I look forward to seeing everyone return at the start of Term 4 on Monday, October 2nd.

Until next time,

Ross