From the Principal
Blackhall - early signs of Spring
On a positive note...
Returning to school after the three week break, in Melbourne mid-winter, Term 3 always starts with the need to look ahead and focus on the positives - just around the corner. Early signs of Spring, more apparent in birdlife, buds and blossoms than the temperature, are everywhere. This year, more than ever, we need to sharpen our awareness of hope and possibility, and nowhere is this more abundant than in nature.
Both on campus and for our students who are required to learn online, it is a time for all of us to find opportunities to reconnect with natural environments, with the solace and comfort nature offers us.
Our students will return to Blackhall Kalimna now showing the cumulative effect of years of modest improvements and additions to the grounds and gardens, ensuring that they have a genuinely attractive environment. In addition, they will return to find the roof over the basketball court installed in all its man-made size and glory! It certainly is big and will offer endless opportunities for activities requiring an extended undercover space that the Secondary School has not had until now.
In Dan’s article today he gives a detailed summary of changes made to the online learning program for this term. We all know that what started off as a temporary reaction to the pandemic in March, a program put together with little time and even less experience of how this might be done well is a very different thing from the prospect our students and parents now face of this program being a reality for much longer than anticipated, and no real certainty beyond that.
Parents will be aware of our requests for feedback and we have been extremely grateful to all those students and parents who have been willing to take the time to reflect on the program and give us their thoughts.
On Monday this week our teachers returned to work to an intensive session where we took on board the main themes that had emerged and made modifications that will hopefully offer a much more supported and accessible program this term. We took the opportunity to really consider the experience from the perspective of our students.
The big messages were that for many students there was simply too much screen time and too much work, too many platforms and programs, too little clarity around instructions and deadlines and students felt isolated – from their classmates and their teachers.
Our teachers, like the outstanding professionals and empathetic adults they are, seized the opportunity to learn, rework and make changes. Thankfully, we also heard from families that the online program was imaginative, innovative, challenging, rich, varied and carefully planned.
In this iteration, as parents you can expect to see genuine efforts to release students from unnecessary screen time, with a diversity of learning tasks and efforts to build in physical activity and engagement with other sources of learning. You should see more collaborative projects for students to work with others, more specific instructions and more accessible platforms.
A published timetable will enable parents to track when students need to be in an online class, when they are free to work at their own pace and when there is specific time for one-to-one contact and help for individual students from their class teachers.
I hope we have moved from reactive to a crisis to responsive to students’ needs, so please accept your role as the people best positioned to give us feedback on how this next version plays out for your daughter or son.
We loved having all the students back onsite, but until such time as that is possible please know that we are taking every measure to keep our Diploma students and teachers safe on campus and our online learning students safe at home.
Marilyn Smith
Principal