Assistant Principal - Learning

 

This week draws to a close the most socially disrupted, physically isolated and uncertain learning term in our educational memory. While not quite the “teaching through an apocalyptic pandemic” experience some were thinking, it profoundly presented us with a type of adversity we have never been faced with before. And as the lead learners in our learning community, our teachers needed to forge the way through the uncertainty, trepidation, and discomfort. In reflection, it was not just our teachers, but also our families, our students - our community of learners. That we have seen through this adversity with a resilience that chooses to celebrate the positives that have arisen from the unprecedented challenges, to empower innovation, and that values the recognition of our students’ voice, is a testament to the growth that we have had as a cohesive, collaborative, Catholic learning community. 

Unfortunately, we need to temper this celebration with the NESA requirement to provide you with a report as to where your child falls on a 5 point grade scale. We’ve worked hard to ensure that this document does not undermine what is undeniably positive from this challenging time. We knew that we wanted to build on the self-reliance and independence our students had developed during the pandemic rather than limit the measurement of their learning achievement to the demonstration in tasks prescribed in the teaching and learning sequence. We asked our students to complete a Google Form in each of their subjects where they reflected on their learning over the term, gave themselves a grade using the NESA performance descriptors, and then justified it. They also needed to identify what they could do to move their learning forward. Our teachers used this self-assessment of their learning to help inform the overall judgement of their students’ demonstration of the learning. 

Herein lies two of the most significant measures of our growth as a learning community - alignment in expectations and resilience. Firstly, in partnership, our teachers and students have aligned their expectations and understanding of learning achievement. As you read through your child’s report this week, do so with the knowledge that these grades, drawn from a five point restrictive scale, don’t necessarily paint you the whole picture of your students' growth over this time. Take a little time to talk to your child about their self-report, what grade did they give themselves? Why did they give themselves that grade? How did it align with what their teacher has awarded them? What has your child identified as strategies to move their learning forward in that subject? Secondly, consider the social, personal and learning resilience that each student has demonstrated in the epochal experiences they have navigated. Such resilience is underpinned with the skills they have developed that will carry them well into the future. It is these measures that definitively silence the harbingers of educational doom that have dominated the narrative throughout this time. And with this in mind, I leave you with the quote that I think reflects best our O’Connor Learning Community as we bring this tumultuous term to a close:

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within

me, there lay, an invincible summer. And that makes 

me happy.

For it says, that no matter how hard the world pushes

against me, within me, there’s something stronger, something better

pushing right back.” 

--Albert Camus  

Eli Simpson

Assistant Principal (Learning)