principal's message
2020 teaching teams
I know we have been quiet on the class formation updates, though I assure all families that work in the background continues at full steam ahead and we are continuing to follow the timeline found in our class formation policy. As per the policy, this week we are announcing the teaching teams for next year and I am super excited about the incredible staff who will be working with your children in 2020!
Foundation: Catherine Beswick, Chris Moed, Faith Kelly, Larissa Fry
Junior School: Emma Mallia & Celia Dickinson, Jess Brown, Jesse Hughes, Jessie Meade & Shalani Marasinghe, Lisa Do, Martin Richards, Nicole Fausten
Middle School: Alice Hamilton & Rebecca Ewer, Bel Martys, Bianca Dallan, Kate Middleton, Tom Dartnell
Senior School: Ann Laming, Deb Robins, Jenny Wheatcroft, Michael McLaughlan, Tim Plummer
Specialists: Andrew Lang & Kate McCormack (Art), Ian Adams & Shalani Marasinghe (Enviro Science), Kasenya Grant & Nadia McComb (Indonesian), Jack Madin (Music), Tom Nelson (PE)
You will likely notice there has been some change and movement of our staff. We say so long (but hopefully not farewell) to Lori, Linda and Emma Hill. Lori is taking a year’s leave to work in an international school overseas, Linda has taken a year to take on new projects and Emma has successfully gained a position in a school near Kyneton, which is much closer to her home. We wish all three the best for 2020 and beyond and hope to see them again soon! We are sad to say goodbye to Alison Burns, Ben Coady, Jack Ryan and Sarah Riley-Smith. Alison, Jack and Sarah are all intending to travel next year (to India, UK and Darwin, respectively) and we hope they all have a wonderful time both personally and professionally. We have thoroughly enjoyed working with you all!
As we say goodbye to some teachers, we also say hello to some others. We are excited to welcome back Rebecca Ewer, who is returning from her Family Leave this year - I am sure many members of our community will be thrilled to see you return! I am also pleased to introduce five new(-ish) teachers to our team. Cath is a highly experienced teacher with a passion for Inquiry, she has worked for a number of years in Victoria, but more recently in Germany and Japan. Martin is a new graduate teacher with an existing relationship with our school. Martin was a student teacher with Chris Moed last year and impressed us during his time here as well as through our interview process. Bianca is another highly experienced teacher who has spent the last 6 years working within Melbourne Zoo’s education program. We are thrilled at the Inquiry and Science expertise that Bianca brings to our team! Tom is not so unknown to many of you, though you might have heard of him as ‘Little Tom’. Tom was a regular CRT for our school this year and attended both camps this year, so he has had contact with most students across the school. We have only ever heard positive feedback from students, families and colleagues about Tom’s work and cannot wait to have him as a permanent member of staff! Last but not least, we introduce Jenny. Jenny comes with 5 years experience, a passion for positive education and student voice and incredible energy!
what's coming up?
We have a very busy calendar ahead of us, with lots of changes to our normal routine. During these times of change, knowing what’s coming and preparing ourselves is helpful for many people.
Next Thursday (12th December) we have our last student free day for the year. Teachers will be spending this time preparing for next year to ensure we start the year in an organised fashion. We are planning out our school calendar, to make sure we have that published and to families by the end of the first week back. We are holding professional development on our approach to Numeracy and supporting the development of friendships across the seven years of primary school. Teachers will be planning in their new teams and we are starting a new approach to ordering supplies in light of our financial and sustainability goals. The next day, on Friday 13th we will be starting our moving process. Two years ago we identified that it was not safe to have students moving furniture, so removalists will be hired for Monday, when students are at FunDay Monday (16th December).
On Tuesday 17th December, we have Art Attak as well as our end of year picnic. We hope all families are able to attend at least a portion of this event, as students and teachers have been working towards this event all term. We have recently reflected on the strengths of having a single focus across the school and are considering how we can harness this approach in other areas of our learning.
On Wednesday 18th December, we will then have our final transition day. This year is the first time we have conducted a whole-day transition, where students will work for the entire day with their new classmates, their new teacher (where possible) and in their new room. This change to our typical program is in response to student feedback - they want a whole day to have a bigger experience of what is to be expected next year. We are looking forward to trialling this new approach and seeking feedback from students, families and teachers afterwards.
specialist day review
Speaking of feedback, our school has reviewed the strengths and challenges of the full-day specialist program this year. We conducted a thorough review of the full-day planning, exploring teacher, student and family opinion, also analysing attendance rates and staff wellbeing. Whilst there were many benefits to a full-day of collaborative planning for our teaching teams, there were impacts that we would like to avoid. Interestingly, the negative impacts were never conclusive; with some students finding elements of the structure to be hugely beneficial, and others finding those same elements challenging. I suppose this is to be expected, when we have such a wonderful mix of diverse individuals! We are excited to be continuing with five specialists, which allows us to provide our teachers with three hours of collaborative planning time each week and two hours at another time in the week for individual planning and meeting with families or colleagues.
school review
We love our school and are very proud of our achievements, but we also recognise that we can continually improve our practices. Over the past two years as principal, I have worked with our school towards the goals in our 2017-2020 Strategic Plan. It is striking how much our school has changed over the past four years and the goals that were pertinent at the time are ready for a review.
As part of a cycle of continuous improvement, Victorian government schools undertake a review every four years. Our school community will complete a comprehensive self-evaluation against the Framework for Improving Student Outcomes (FISO) in term 1 of next year. This consultation will involve students, teachers and community members.
In term 2, an independent analysis is also completed of our school’s performance against the goals and targets in our current school strategic plan. The review evaluates the school's strengths, areas for improvement and the impact of its improvement efforts.
At the end of the review, a new four-year school strategic plan is created and endorsed by the school community, this will be complete by mid next year. There will be many opportunities for our community to be involved in developing a new, refined and purposeful vision of our school’s next steps, which I will continue to communicate through our newsletter. So stay tuned!
child safety standards
The Victorian Child Safe Standards say that children have a right to be heard and have their concerns and ideas taken seriously. This is something we champion at BNWPS and have consulted with our students on a range of issues including but not limited to #FreeToBeMe, improving gender equity in the yard and more recently, exploring Cultural Safety at our school as well as building resilience in friendships and learning.
Last month, our school participated in a Child Safety Standards audit. We appreciated taking the time to assess how we are meeting the standards expected of a school, yet we believe our school can (and should) surpass these standards. We would now like the children’s voices to be embedded in the policies we have developed and implemented; they are about child safety and therefore children’s voices are essential.
We invited Body Safety Australia to work with small groups of students from across the school to elicit responses on what it means to feel safe, how they can support others and how we, as adults, can best support our children and students. The responses are currently being drafted into a Statement of Safety in accessible language, accompanied by the students’ artistic representations of how we care for each other and create safe learning environments for everyone.
We are extremely excited by this opportunity to again collaborate with our students for the continual improvement of education and children’s rights within our school and across our school network. We expect the document to be ready by the beginning of the new school year.
school council update
Last Thursday our school council gathered for the last meeting of the year. At our meeting, we were lucky enough to be joined by Tim Read to discuss where our Capital Works funding has taken us so far and to discuss our hopes and dreams for the future of our school. It was fantastic to have Tim visit, including a tour of our wonderful Yakai Barring, led by students, and to hear him comment on the natural resources we have available and how we might be able to achieve our vision.
Also at school council, we said farewell to Fiona Heathcote, our School Council President. Fiona and her family have been part of our school-family for 14 years! She has been on School Council for the past six years and our President for the past five, however as Fiona’s youngest child is about to leave the school, she has stepped down from her role on Council. Fiona has been impeccable in her support of our school through challenging times and was the face of a School Council funding campaign that was of such an exceptionally high standard that it not only earned us some big funding, Tim Read was still commenting on the quality of the campaign last week! From myself and our school community, I thank Fiona for everything she has done, for every late night, additional hour, email and baked cookie, your support is deeply felt and appreciated. Thank you.
With Fiona stepping down from her position as School Council President, our Council went through a nomination and voting process for a new School Council President on the same night. I am pleased to announce Sam Cohen as our new School Council President. Sam has been on School Council for nine years and has been Treasurer for the same amount of time. We appreciate him continuing his work with School Council and are excited by our future possibilities. Sam’s appointment will only take him through to the end of Term 1 and the end of our annual School Council nomination process. After the nominations (and potentially a ballot) closes, we will again go through a process of nominating and voting on executive positions. If you are interested in joining school council or its sub-committees, please keep an eye out in the newsletter. We will also be updating our school council website page to reflect the new memberships and possibilities for getting involved in the very near future.