Thank you St. Mary's: Thoughts I am taking home to St. Francis Xavier Woolgoolga. Robyn Lockwood

Developing Further Opportunity; Integrating Community Skills & Talents and Re-Situating Audience in Facilitating a Culture of Excellence.  Three things I am taking home to St. Francis Xavier ( click on the blue highlighted words throughout to view a link)

Over the last years, as a staff at St Francis Xavier, we have worked tirelessly from our Strategic School Plan to implement many pedagogical researched based initiatives. Aligned with this, has been the impressive investment in technology across the school. Professional development opportunities such as  the teaching staff visiting schools in Melbourne, which was an intrinsic part of our pedagogical upskilling. Maximising learning outcomes for children continues to take centre stage, as increasingly targeted interventions at the point of need are implemented.    
                                                                                  

As teachers starting with Kindergarten some four years ago, across the school most learning groups are now cooperatively taught in spacious double rooms, where to the best of our available resourcing and money, we have made a substantial start to re-furnishing our learning environments. This focus was to create a greater fexibility for varied groupings of children, giving them a sense of ownership within their learning spaces. So where to from here? 

What are the three main things I am taking back to my school? 
1) Developing Further Opportunities that encourage creativity, problem solving, technology, talents and skills, higher order thinking and developing solutions. The major aspect that I could feel was continually developing and strengthing in my pysche over the week at St. Mary's North Sydney, was the opportunty afforded to the children there; to be involved in activities ranging from participating in an instrumental band, to being in debating teams, to experiencing immersion in another language through familial French and the problem solving, construction, utilsation of software and programming techniques inherent in working with Robotics.
Initally I thought that to create some of these opportunities in our school community would be too difficult as the socio-economics of our area is quite different to that of the North Shore in Sydney. However, as I visited debating between school teams at night, later watching how debating was integrated into the school week from years 2-6 and spoke to the lady who came in from the wider community to work with the students; as I  watched how French was shared in a familial sense again sourcing the skills required externally, as it was, with the band and the Robotics, I realised it is not all about money but very much about community, opening up opportunties and working smarter to search out possibilities.

Robotics

                         

           School Debating

Band

2) Integrating Community Skills & Talents:
Band a possibility?     
Our community is over archingly sport based. To participate in these activities also incurs cost. I would like to take back to my school the ability to look into the ways we may integrate into the school community some cultural pursuits like a school band, debating teams or Robotics. The band leader at St. Mary's explained that many of the children hired their instruments for a short time to see whether they were going to continue with band. There are many people out there in our communties with the skills we could utilise. At St. Mary's the chlidren pay a weekly fee to participate in band, which is no different to the costs for basketball. I guess what I am suggesting is we need to survey for interest, put the offer out, start wth the goal and work through the steps. It would be so much more balanced to have cultural pursuits on offer as a school community as well as the heavy sports focus.  We also have a wonderful Conservatorium of Music in Coffs Harbour....
Debating?
St. Mary's once again has utilsed community sourced personnel (a coach from Toastmasters) to assist the children interested in developing their debating/public speaking skills. Classes from  years 2 - 6 have 1/2 an hour a week as children gain experience in the skills of debating, gradually taking part in class debating with teams chosen from the class members. The goal is for the children in those years to work towards an intra or inter school debate. I was fortunate enough to watch one of these debates on the Tuesday night of my visit to St. Mary's. All years 3-6 were involved in a debating competition with schools from Balmain. The event drew in many of the school and wider community as audience for the event. The year 2's at this stage were developing their public speaking skills in readiness for debating.
Robotics?
Just amazing! Again, a member sourced from the wider community took Robotics after school as well as 2- 6 having a Robotics time for 1/2 an hour during the week. The school had purchased some kits that students could have turns in constructing and using. From here or even prior some children had their own Robotic kits. Surely this is not different to the cost of soccer boots, uniforms, insurances and weekly game fees. Hopefully our school may look at considering how we may offer this as an area of mechanical, engineering, computerised problem solving and even more importantly as a contributing element  of Science and Technology. Through this children do not just learn how to build advanced lego kits, they are encouraged to utilise higher order thinking and develop solutions to problems they may come up against in the processes involved. They also participate in combined schools quests.
French:
Classes enjoyed the exposure to another language. Although we live in area that would have us consider Asian languages. I do not think the choice of language is as important as the fact we are immersing the children in another language in the context of broadening their global perspective. Children are immersed in the language through activity, not through rote learnng of terms.  Classes have 1/2 an hour a week of French. I was privvy to a young class who was that day making and sharing crepes with language being used from the first hello to au revoir at the lesson end.

And So...
Certainly it can all seem too difficult, but as learning communities we need to reach out and tap into the wider community including gaining a skills bank of the parents within our own school community, The other challenge is "time"; if we continue to be very lock stepped with our KLA times, how can we develop greater flexibility through opportunity. Each of the above areas are integrative of the key skills of literacy, maths, speaking and listening and writing with the added bonus of global perspectives, problem solving and creative and higher order thinking.  Then, there's the "audience" factor.

3) Re-Situating Audience in Facilitating a Culture of Excellence. 
The third but in no way minor aspect that I am taking away from St. Mary's to our school, is the facet of "audience"  in enhancing task relevance. From English, to Maths, to PDHPE, to Language, Science and Technology, to the Creative Arts and ICT, audience plays a major part in life and learnng at St. Mary's. The audience factor gives the children a goal in setting high expectations of task quality and presentation. There is a sense of "reason" a purpose to their activities. At the time I was there, Year 6 had chosen their own individual ways in which they would develop a presentation about a Saint. The ways in which the children had completed their project ( as part of their Religion lessons) was incredible. These then were on display in the classroom which the younger classes came to visit. The younger children would "call on" each display to learn about the  different Saints from their older peers. The young children went away with Bookmarks, information sheets to put in their own R.E books,  mini laminated figures and so on. Superb peer to peer learning. Robotics participants were creating and programing from software downloads,  readying their creations to take part in a Robotics challenge while the instrumental band was fairly new and were thrilled to perform a piece which I video-ed to take home to our students.

At assembly the senior students not only assist with its running, but they as a whole senior mentoring year, organise art competitions, lunch time activities, spelling bees as well as sharing with the school assembly, any playground issues. I witnessed some of the senior students at the last assembly sharing their disappointment about paper throwing in the toilets. These students asked for a meeting of seniors who would form a roster to supervise the toilets to ensure this behaviour stopped. Many hands were forthcoming to meet and create a roster and the younger years were on notice about the behaviour. This is all authentic audience.

The school has a school song which is readily sung by all, as well as the national anthem at assembly  and on other occasions. The school's student newsletter "Kidspeak" offers an avenue for writing, reading, problem solving, maths puzzles, art competitions. Again, a purpose for learning... audience.