Shining Lights for 23/3/2023, Week 8, Term 1

- Building our Learning Communities

Indigenous students, along with Aboriginal Education Worker, Tamika Gaudie and myself visited Wyndham Public School and Rocky Hall Preschool this week. The students, Nesta Williams, Sonia Myers and Kayne Thomas-Woods  were proud to bring the Canoe project of 2022 to conclusion, gifting the canoes to both schools, playing a part in the creation of indigenous culture spaces.

Indigenous Captain, Nesta acknowledged country at both sites, while Kayne and Sonia gave accounts of the canoe project and the process of constructing the canoes, beginning with a plain sheet of plyboard, through to float testing and painting.

We thank Principal, Jo Collins for the wonderful welcome that we received at Wyndham Public School, and Director, Jodie Dickinson  for the community morning tea at Rocky Hall. Our students were wonderful cultural ambassadors who are pleased to share their work and build community links between our schools.

Misteaks 

Any teacher or parent knows a bit about mistakes – their own and their child’s. There is ancient wisdom, of course, that we learn from our mistakes. In a classroom context, mistakes are absolutely vital to learning. A first attempt, with teacher’s guidance, grows into understanding. Happy days.  

Mistakes are great! The famous Michael Jordan quotation is inspirational, “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”  

What can be challenging in class is the not being prepared to make a mistake through an avoidance scenario. Kids can be great distractors or passive resisters. The teacher has to break this right down and track the reluctance, and then almost anything could be in play, from just a bad hair day through to very, very complex or bad stuff.   

I don’t think that there is an argument that mistakes are the opportunity for growth. But kids are kids and that all-consuming search for identity, self-centered developmental thinking and their lack of proportion can come to the fore.   

Spelling a word wrong and then learning to spell it right is one thing. The “bigger” mistakes are the real stuff of parenting and pastoral care. On cue (and I shouldn’t be flippant I suppose) enter wrong crowd, vaping, drugs, pornography, inappropriate relationships, alcohol, bullying… Most kids at some point make a “big” mistake.  

What happens next is interesting. And remember, for some kids “the mistake” is amidst an otherwise “stable” existence; for some their lives are chaotic and there are layers of complexity, trauma or disadvantage.  

What I reckon must be cornerstone, is that the young person knows that you love them regardless - nothing will be worked out if the child walks away (or will next time). This probably rules out blowing your stack, blame, I told you so, the guilt trip and so on. Kids’ eyes just glaze over. They live in the moment and the future often doesn’t mean much. Punishment gets attention but doesn’t often do much in the long run. 

What we try to do at school with restorative practice, the long game, has application to these “big” mistakes. Calm is good. Listening is good. Identifying all involved and how they are feeling is good. Collaboration with all the involved, if possible, is good. Accepting responsibility is very good. Repair is good. Planning for next time is good.  

The ‘big” mistakes are going to happen, it’s not helpful to feel guilty (you might be to a degree – but you can’t undo the past, only try to make the future better and you might be in front if your kid recognizes that you acknowledge that you aren’t perfect either). You can’t, and shouldn’t want to, wrap them in cotton wool. This strategy, for sure, will trigger really big mistakes, just as surely as the laissez faire (my thirteen-year-old is out overnight at a party, somewhere). The “warrior” approach, that is to take on the mistake and solve it yourself, is probably a missed opportunity to for the young person to learn, maybe even enables learned helplessness or entitlement. I’ve seen it, deal with it often.  

It's difficult. Most kids get through their “big mistake” pretty well with adult support and guidance. Some kids, however, don’t and their “big mistake” controls them, owns them, forms them. This is a tragedy. We must handle the big mistake well when it comes.  

Of course, some kids don’t get choices. Some kids have to find a way through the poor choices of others.   

I’m afraid that I have set myself up as the oracle again. I should acknowledge that I have taken most of the poor options outlined above at various times (but never laissez faire). Probably most guilty of the deluxe blow up followed by the warrior.  

But I’m still trying to learn from my mistakes.  

Primary Curriculum Update

It has been great to catch up with so many of our families this week to discuss our students' learning and to look at our goals for the coming school year.

This year there are new curriculums for English and Mathematics for our K to 2 students and over the next few years there will be a number of new curriculums implemented in NSW schools. We will be working closely with schools across the diocese to ensure our students have access to great resources and lessons engage them.

One focus this year has been on delivering a new Mathematics Scope and Sequence for our K to 6 classes. The design of the new lessons are based on the latest research utilising  many of the principles of High Impact Teaching Practices HITP and Low Variance Curriculum. There is a lot of ongoing Professional Development for our staff in these areas. We were also fortunate to have two of our Primary staff, Cristal Dinwoodie and Debbie Cummings, involved with the development of the lessons. 

Included in the lessons are Daily Reviews that go over and reinforce skills and knowledge the students already have learned. They have materials for explicit teaching of new concepts and built into the design are opportunities for ongoing checks for understanding to monitor the progress of the students.

The Scope and Sequence has the topics interleaved. This means that rather than study one particular skill for an extended time then testing and moving onto something else, the students circle back to each topic regularly. This helps the students to retain the knowledge and skills for a longer time and importantly over time it teaches them to identify what type of mathematical problem they are solving and what strategies they will need to solve the problem. Rather than just being told they are working on subtraction this week they will look at a range of topics and learn to know when to use different strategies.