The Youth of Today

Since taking up my new role as Acting Deputy Principal, I have been trying to remember what it was like to be a High School student.

I have briefly taught in the High School many year ago, but most of my educational journey has been in the Upper Primary school.

I remember my own children’s High school days. My daughter loved everybody and was everybody’s best friend. She never stopped talking to me about everything. I knew far too much about the goings on in the lives of many students, and what happened in the classes of all her teachers. My son was a different matter. He was very quiet. It was hard to get him to talk about anything, let alone school. In Grade 9, I decided to pick him up from school on Thursdays and take him on a regular mum date to a café. I remember these as silent car rides, him grunting ‘can I have a pie and a cake?’, me sitting asking him questions about his day, him giving one-word grunted answers between mouthfuls and then silent drives home. Amazingly, Jake’s reflection on these times is quite different; he remembers them as special connecting times very fondly!

I know that High School years are amazing years, as our precious young ones push out of the supportive cocoon of childhood into early adulthood. They need to find their wings and, with guidance, learn how to fly. It’s a time of conflict and trying out new things. We expect them to get louder and learn how to respectfully (hopefully) disagree with us as they try on their burgeoning adult selves.

Adolescence has been recognised as a time of turmoil and growth for centuries. Ancient Roman, Greek and Egyptian cultures identified it as a separate stage and many cultures past and present, celebrate the end of this stage with ceremonies of some type. There are numerous quotes about youth. In his 1624 book The Wise-Man's Forecast against the Evill Time, Thomas Barnes, the minister of St. Margaret's Church on New Fish Street in London, complained: "Youth were never more sawcie, yea never more savagely saucie ... the ancient are scorned, the honourable are contemned, the magistrate is not dreaded."

Adolescence is a time of great change for young people…adolescence is not just marked by physical changes—young people are also experiencing cognitive, social/emotional and interpersonal changes as well. As they grow and develop, young people are influenced by outside factors such as: parents, peers, community, culture, religion, school, world events and the media. While it is true that each teenager is an individual with a unique personality and interests, there are also numerous developmental issues that just about every teen faces during the early, middle and late adolescent years (AACAP, 2003).

How we, as a learning community, respond to our High School students is of great importance. We need to work, as a community, hopefully a like-minded team of educators and guardians/parents, to give our adolescents clear boundaries, engaging educational opportunities, a listening ear and a lot of love and grace as they navigate this time.

I look forward to meeting past students and hearing about their lives. My own children survived and are thriving in their lives. Jake and I have amazing conversations involving a lot more than questions about food (he still does regularly raid my fridge), and on Saturday I walked on Mount Wellington with them both. Our children are our greatest blessing and sometimes our biggest prayer need. Let’s keep praying and loving them.

Annie Joy — Acting Deputy Principal

The Importance of Relationships in Education

When undertaking my postgraduate studies in education, I would have never contemplated how relationships would affect the educational outcomes of the students in my care.

The concept never seemed to be of a greater importance when compared with students meeting curriculum outcomes and yearly achievement standards. There were always so many other objectives to be met when teaching students, however in my first few years as a practising educator, I realised that relationships are pivotal to everything we do in the classroom and without it, our students are going to struggle to learn the fundamental concepts in our teachings.

So why are relationships so important? As discussed in an article from the New South Wales government ‘Teacher-student relations have strong positive correlations with gains in intellectual engagement. Students with positive teacher-student relations have a greater motivation to perform well academically’. It is pretty simple, without positive teacher-student relationships, students are going to struggle to learn in the classroom setting. The article further articulates, that the relationship between students and their educators also affect their relationships with their peers, particularly in the area of peer acceptance.

When I discuss the concept of relationships, I think it is important to note that this does not mean that the teacher and student are always going to see the same picture and agree. Like all relationships, there are going to be disagreements and times when the relationship does not always seem to go smoothly. This can be particularly around behaviour management, when a student might feel that a decision is unfair. This is when the framework of Restorative Justice comes into play. Restorative justice, as described by Monash University, is ‘A framework that educators can use to create safe, supportive spaces in our schools. All members of the school learn to bravely engage in that community, and learn from honest – and sometimes difficult – conversations.’ The article continues with the discussion, elaborating about how the framework allows for students and teachers to build and nurture meaningful and just relationships.

Teaching through relationships is one of the key concepts that allows students to achieve their best and to learn in the best culture possible. While maintaining this relationship between teachers and students, teaching through relationships ‘Recognises the human stories of the learners themselves (they are not blank slates), as well as that of the teacher. It is an approach that embraces our complex identities, biographies, and the stories we bring that serve to humanise the subjects we teach.’ Teaching through relationships is something that is highly valued amongst the educators at Emmanuel Christian School. We see every child as a unique individual, created and called to a purpose.

Fostering relationships are not only important in the school setting, but also at home. Positive relationships between parents and child are important for all areas of children’s development. You can foster this by building trust and by spending quality time together at home. It doesn’t have to be for hours at a time, it can be simple conversations and spending time together face to face away from technology. Over time, you will see the beautiful relationship that continues to grow as your child grows and matures into adulthood.

Laura Ferguson — Head of Teaching and Learning Primary

Feedback

Our school's vision statement reads that we want to be a transformational Christian learning community. And our mission statement is to provide the highest quality, Christ-centred education that prepares and equips students for life.

In an ever-changing world, we cannot afford to keep doing what we always have, if we are to successfully enact these two statements and educate our changing students. We need to do things differently; we need to reimagine our practice to enhance the teaching and learning programs we run. Whilst we won't achieve these goals overnight, we can change for the better with continual minor tweaks. There will be many things required for us to see these goals come to fruition, and one crucial factor that will assist us in reaching these goals, is to strengthen partnerships between parents and school. By working together, it should be easier to achieve good outcomes.

Starting at the beginning of this Term, staff in Years 5 – 10 are moving to a model of continuous reporting. We hope that ongoing reporting will assist teachers in being able to connect more deeply with students and parents, by providing more frequent opportunities to be in dialogue, in regards to student learning and progress.

Traditionally, schools distribute three reports a year—an interim and two formal reports. The interim report, usually completed early in Term one, gives parents an indication of how well their child has settled into the new school year. The formal reports are conducted at the end of Term two and Term four, and contain both written comments and a grade to indicate how well the child has progressed. This model is antiquated and is not efficient enough to help today's learners. We want to provide regular and accurate feedback to our students and parents. Hopefully, this will also enable you to better support your child's progress and know how they perform in each subject area. It will also allow you to celebrate their successes and provide targeted assistance to areas of most need.

The most important aspect of this move will be staff providing feedback promptly, to both our students and parents. Teachers design effective feedback to determine a learner's level of understanding and skill development to plan the next steps towards achieving the learning intentions. Feedback is one of the most effective teaching and learning strategies, and immediately impacts learning progress. High-quality feedback is specific and ongoing. When delivered on time, John Hattie's research shows feedback has an effect size of 0.73 on learning achievement. As a school that uses the Visible Learning approach, we know that anything with an effect size over 0.40 has a positive impact on learning.

Above | The SEQTA Engage Logo

I encourage you to make sure that you regularly check SEQTA Engage, Emmanuel’s Learning Management System. If you are unsure of your login details, don't hesitate to get in touch with the School Office, and they will assist you in getting set up. Alternatively, you can also download the SEQTA Engage app via Google Play or App Store and login with the same credentials.

A short video will also be available shortly, to demonstrate how you can see student assessments and feedback through this platform. It will be communicated at a later date when it is released.

I also encourage you to discuss the feedback with your children. The feedback will be more regular and a great opportunity to discuss their progress. Sometimes the feedback will be positive, and sometimes, maybe not quite so. Learning is a journey, we are all at different stages of the trip, and we can all benefit from assistance from time to time.

Drew Roberts — Acting Principal

Collaborative Teams

Learning is a continuous and life long process. As teachers it is important for us to engage in the learning process throughout our careers.

During 2021, we started working in Collaborative Teams. This enabled us to work with our colleagues and work on a range of topics and improve our teaching practices.

During our Professional Development at the start of this term, teachers have once again formed collaborative teams. They will be working on the topic of respect, and how this translates into the relationships and subject content in the classrooms and also how this impacts and manifests throughout the school culture.

Teachers often work independently within their subject areas and sometimes this can be an isolating environment. By working with a team, it allows us to share new ideas, pedagogy and enables us to learn from our colleagues. The purpose of working together, is to encourage students to work to their full potential, use higher-order thinking skills and have students understand and apply their learnt skills to other learning areas and contexts.

Collaborative Teams follows a learning cycle and this is what teachers will be working on over the course of this year. As there are a number of new staff at Emmanuel, the collaboration in the various groups will be varied and rich, as everyone brings new knowledge and experiences to the meetings. These will enable us to learn new skills to transfer into the classroom and explore new avenues in teaching and learning. A follow up article will appear in the Big Picture as our work progresses.

Janice Pieterse — Secondary Learning Support Co-ordinator

The Importance of Belief

I am a huge basketball fan, and I have loved having our very own state NBL team called the Jack Jumpers.

The process to get them to be in the NBL was long and tedious. It took time, finance, local backing, venue availability, and many other hoops to jump through before it was approved to go ahead. Thankfully it did! In our very first year, we have made the NBL finals, versing the Sydney Kings.  For anyone who has been following the journey and knows a thing or two about sport, at this elite level, the predications and expectations were that Tasmania Jack Jumpers would be at the bottom of the ladder without much hope of winning any games. In fact, that is exactly how our season started. In the first 10 games, we only won 2. This was not a fantastic start. However, as the season progressed, the Tassie team that was full of individuals from around Australia and the globe, came together and defeated the odds. Over time, we were able to claw our way back into a winning position and beat Melbourne United in the semi-finals in order to make the Grand-final. What a turnaround!

The message I take away from their journey is the power of belief. Their belief in each other and themselves, to achieve what looked like the impossible. All commentators of the sport and even many locals on the ground, predicted a pretty tough year of learning and development. This group of players and coaching staff had a different idea. They believed that no matter what, they would overcome, rally together, and show Australia what they are truly capable of. In life, we also must overcome challenges and face the critics, but we can rise to the challenge and focus on who we can be, not who we currently are. Having an internal belief, that’s solid to the core, is a powerful thing, and it is here, where we can have breakthroughs and success as we achieve our goals.

This is also a great reminder for us to have a few close people in our life who believe in us and care for us. Studies show that teacher efficacy and belief in their students are some of the greatest factors related to student success and development. As teachers and parents, we have the opportunity to be the biggest fans, supporters and believers of the young people we do life with. This will not only set them up for success, but reminds them, regardless of their own or others opinion, that we believe in them and see the potential for further greatness in their lives.

Francis Pascal — Primary Co-ordinator