Teacher & Learning during Lockdown

Learning & Teaching

Even though we only adapted to the Covid 19 education sector response in March of this year, it feels as if it was another lifetime ago. Our entire education system has moved into and out of delivering learning in and out of an emergency situation. In that time there has been enormous learning and clarification of what is essential to the way students access, engage with and progress through their individual experiences of learning. We recently asked staff for feedback on their experiences during the past two months, in particular; what we have learned about ourselves and our students; what was positive about ‘remote learning’ and what things have become less essential. The answers to these questions will partly inform rich conversations for the next 18 months as we imagine how we can improve our college to become even more student focused.

From the commencement of Term 2 on April 15 this year, we began a new approach to learning and teaching. Not only did we have to engage students, deliver an adjusted curriculum, upskill our staff very quickly to using new information and communication technology and manage our own personal responses to a social upheaval that most had never experienced, we also demanded of ourselves that no student or teacher fell through the gaps during this time. In this year of Justice, we kept asking ourselves if we were being just and fair in what we expected of our staff, students and families. We quickly decided that we would not try to deliver the same curriculum in the same way as if the college were operating normally. Considerations included student and family access and equity issues, personal, family and community issues for all staff and that the situation presented an emergency, rather than purely ‘continuity of learning’ response. The DET were very helpful in clarifying the continuation of literacy, numeracy, physical activity and a blended remote learning environment.

To address access, we created a simple portal using our familiar Google Suite for Education, more specifically, the google generic website creation application called “sites”. This was called Killester Organised Online Learning. Every Year level had a page that included a link to every subject and the learning materials and instructions were placed on here. After feeling our way through the first fortnight, we quickly decided that only English, Maths and HEPE would continue to provide learning materials for the rest of the remote learning period across Years 7-10. We also added another continuing subject at each year level (Religious Education for Years 7&8, Science for Year 9 and Humanities for Year 10). With the aim to ensure students in these levels also engaged in meaningful, intrinsically motivated learning we also create “Change Yourself; Change The World” a four to five week passion project facilitated by Project Mentors who communicated weekly, in a Google Meet (video conference), with a small group of students to guide them through a highly structured process that focussed purely on students completing a project based on their personal passion. As an adjunct to this, the reflective journal accompanying the project development, encouraged students to develop their metacognitive skills and culminated in both the Project outcome and the self reflective Final Report that focussed students on how they learnt more than what they learnt.

For Year 11 and 12 students, and Year 10 students who were doing a VCE unit, we continued to deliver an adjusted, somewhat reduced, somewhat more intensive curriculum. Students in all VCE and VCAL subjects attended two, one-hour, online tutorials, again using Google Meet (the google equivalent of ZOOM or Microsoft Teams or WebEx) to communicate with and support students with their learning. The range of new ideas, experimentation and goodwill shown by both students and teachers in this remote learning environment, was outstanding. The vast majority of our students were willing and able to continue to engage in all sessions live or engage with the recordings of these sessions at a more suitable time. Any student that had difficulty during remote learning was supported with phone contact, follow up emails and sometimes, home visits. Our focus was keeping all students able to access continuity of learning no matter their circumstance.

At the time of writing this report there has been little time for reflection, however, the following is pertinent:

Our students and our teachers appreciated and responded positively to the college not trying to switch from face to face teaching to an identical online model. Part of the evidence of this is the high attendance we had online and have had since returning to school. Survey data also showed this.
Our staff have been extremely positive in their acknowledgement of the focus on justice demonstrated by decisions the leadership team made to support staff and students.
There is much to be gained from the remote learning disruption. The term disruption is not used as a pejorative here. The situation has already shown us that our students have many, many more capabilities than perhaps many teachers realised.
Remote learning in an emergency situation that demanded flexibility, rapid change, ingenuity and empathy, was difficult and highly demanding of the entire school community.

Steve McPhail

Teaching and Learning Leader