Principal's Report
As the temperature drops, and we get fewer of those glorious autumn afternoons, it feels like winter is certainly coming to Thornbury. It is a great time to stop by our school library to pick up a book to read on the couch after school. Personally, I am halfway through Alexis Wright’s latest novel, Praiseworthy, which is a magical realist exploration of an Indigenous community in the Northern Territory. It recently won the Stella Prize and is a very creative and unique take on how climate change affects a small community, written from a First Nations perspective – I highly recommend it.
Earlier this term, we had a great Welcome to Country and Smoking Ceremony outside our STEAM Centre at THS. In the smoking ceremony, we all had the opportunity to clean the soles of our feet of bad spirits and to cleanse the land of our school, inviting only good spirits. While the ceremony itself was conducted by a Wurundjeri elder, Perry Wandin, we also enjoyed a brilliant dance performance from a group of THS students. Thank you to Ms Elsbeth Blunt for organising this great event.
Over the course of this term and next semester, we are running a number of professional learning sessions for our teachers at THS on the topic of explicit instruction, which is an evidence-based teaching approach that involves making the learning intention of the lesson clear to students, demonstrating that particular skills and explaining key concepts, before giving students opportunities to practise that skill and receive feedback on how to continue improving. It has been inspiring for me to see teachers engage with this training with commitment and curiosity, and this week I took part in a learning walk with other teachers to see this teaching practice in action in some of our colleagues’ classrooms. We will continue exploring what explicit instruction looks like in practice at THS through our Professional Learning Communities, our professional learning program, and our instructional coaching for teachers.
Ultimately, our goal is for all students to have a clear sense of what they are trying to learn in each lesson, so that they can develop their own agency in relation to their learning. It is very important to me that our students leave THS with the skills, disposition, and growth mindset to be life-long learners in the future. Serena Williams, perhaps the greatest tennis player of all time, embodies that approach when she says that she has ‘grown most not from victories, but from setbacks…life is about learning something new every day.’ As a school, we aim to foster that willingness to embrace our own learning, seek out opportunities to grow and learn, and seek feedback from others that will help us improve. This applies as much to students as it does to all of us working at THS. As the principal, I recognise that like everyone else, I will make mistakes from time to time; my goal is to continue learning and improving each week so that my leadership grows stronger over time.
The learning of our students has been on display in the many great events we have run already this term. This includes the wonderful Shakespeare Fest, the very charming Puffs production, and our impressive Mid-Year Music Concert. I would like to thank our excellent Performing Arts team for their hard work and commitment in planning, organising and running these very successful events. In this newsletter, you will be able to read about a great number of other excellent learning opportunities for our students already in Term 2 – THS is a very busy school with an incredibly rich program of co-curricular activities, excursions, camps and events for our students. This can only happen as a result of the incredible efforts of our staff, whose energy and commitment make this possible; I am very grateful and appreciative of all their work.
Take care and thank you all for your contributions to the THS community.
Lars
Principal