Innovative Learning Environments Expo 3
Friday 15 October, 2010 at the Community Arts Centre, Seymour
Presentation transcript
Developing and living an educational rationale. What does it look like in action?
Wangaratta High School
This podcast is brought to you by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development,
Victoria.
Speaker 1:
Thanks, Marg. Welcome.
workshop.
Thank you very much for choosing to come along to this
I did a very short presentation at a sub-regional meeting last term to Principals and
Assistant Principals in Hume Region and it was to showcase a little bit about our senior
school initiative but also to talk about where we’re heading in our journey. The workshop
is entitled Developing and Living an Educational Rationale, what does it look like in
action? And I have to say that I’ve only been at Wangaratta High School coming up two
years mid-November. And so this vision really began well before I was at Wangaratta
High School and Judy Rose who did the opening address today and welcome was the
Principal previous to myself. And so Judy really worked with the architect to develop the
vision for the whole school, so I can’t really take credit for that although I feel that I am
very much contributing to that and leading and living that vision as we go through.
So, we started off, we’re part of a regeneration project, so the whole school is being
rebuilt. It is a very old school. We have some really old areas of the school that are quite
run down and challenging for teaching and learning at its best, and in the discussions
about the presentation, or the whole regeneration project, it was decided to start with the
senior school because we felt that they would be the hardest to shift.
Most schools that have had Leading Schools Fund money across Victoria and other
projects like that where they’ve had a chance to build some innovative learning spaces
have gone with more either middle or junior level students, so to start with the senior
school is quite different. There are a few other schools in Melbourne that have got senior
school open plan environments, but not many, and so there was a real challenge for us
there.
We already had a number of junior teams that were team teaching, working in slightly
larger spaces than single classrooms already and so we felt that for the junior people it
was not going to be the same sort of challenge to shift them into a new open learning
environment, but for a lot of the senior staff, they’ve always taught with their own class in
their own rooms doing their own things and really didn’t bother about what other people
were doing. And so, we felt that this was a great place to start.
Our vision is really to, go back, just one, that’s it, yep. No, there is one before that, sorry,
that’s it. So, how were we going to do this? How were we going to change the pedagogy,
the thinking of our senior staff? Prior to the Bastow Institute, the Department of Education
Early Childhood Development has offered leadership programs, development programs
for a number of different areas within schools and so Wangaratta High School decided to
send a team off to the Leading In Effective Schools program that ran a couple of years
ago.
And the responsibility of that team was to then to develop a charter. So, what were the
things that the school needed to increase in terms of developing this program and how
would they go about it and a bit of a time line for that? So, the Flex Team as they were
called, Flex referring to the flexible learning spaces, then began to look at other schools.
They went and visited a few other schools and started to talk about how they were going
to work within these spaces. Sorry, I have mucked one up. If you go to … sorry, that one.
Ok, so in the construction phase there was a lot of talk about how these spaces were
going to look, obviously it looks very, very different now and it’s been in operation for two
years.
There was a lot of reservation about the size of these spaces and how on earth were we
going to actually function in these spaces, given that they were very different to what our
usual classrooms look like.
So, the Flex Team set about making some changes, we had a couple of spaces existing
in the school where there was enough room to put or squeeze two senior classes in
together and so the practice began to, we asked for volunteers for trialling some team
teaching at the senior level.
So, this is a senior maths class, there are two classes in here of year 12 students I
believe, and they’re working in a tiled, ceramic tiled floor room with very poor acoustics
and so it was a real challenge, even just to get the noise levels right and all the rest of it
was a really difficult task. They spent a lot of time, as I said, going out and visiting other
schools and seeing what sort of practices were being used and how they could
incorporate some of those into what we were working towards at Wangaratta High
School.
The Flex Team had regular meetings with all of the senior teaching staff, talked to them
about what they were experiencing, what the challenges were. They were constantly
asking the students for feedback as well, just to get the feeling because they were
obviously the ones who were doing the learning and were they being able to learn in that
sort of environment. And I would say to get through a double session in senior maths,
probably on a Friday afternoon, an environment like that with plastic chairs on ceramic
tiles was a real challenge for them. So they had plenty to look forward to in terms of a
much better environment.
It was really important to have a student voice and so some of the students in smaller
groups were taken over to the spaces during the construction stage. This is where you
might be doing and this is one of the smaller tutorial rooms and I will show you the outline
later and point out where this is but this was allowing them to try and visualise themselves
working in this space, what the issues were going to be for them, what were going to be
the good things that they really would enjoy about these learning spaces?
There are on the study side of the building there are two smaller rooms that are used for
LOTE classes, physics classes. Ones where there are smaller numbers of students in
those classes, where they don’t need specialised equipment.
So, we were looking at 21st Century learning and we were looking for flexible environment
so that it allowed for some current practice but also looking to evolving practice. What
were we going to be doing say in three or five years’ time? It’s not just about picking up
what we were doing in an old single classroom and moving that into an open space and
trying to still do the same thing, we didn’t believe that would work and I don’t think it does
work. You need to change the thinking, change the pedagogy so that you can be
exploring new possibilities all the time.
So, it was about being bold, looking at how the spaces could be used in one particular
way at one period of time and changing that in the future to perhaps to suit some different
needs. Being creative and risk-taking, I suppose, in trying some new things was very
much important for this. Being supportive of all the learners, and that is staff and students.
So, some staff were very very apprehensive about being a part of this building, in fact I
think, when the move occurred, when I was there, right at the end of 2008, people were
taking very small steps carrying their stuff over to the senior school because they really
did it very, very reluctantly. I don’t think there was anyone who had worked in that sort of
environment prior to the trialling that we did.
And then, we’re talking a bit about enterprise and so making each space capable of
supporting different purposes. So, it wasn’t about saying, “Well, I’ve got, I teach
psychology and this is what I have in my current classroom,” taking it over and saying,
“that’s now my psychology room.” It wasn’t about that at all and when I show you the
outlay, you will see that it staff are timetabled into or classes are timetabled into Learning
Commons and within that Learning Common there is a larger space that can very
comfortably house two classes at a time and then there are three single classrooms off
that main room. They might be timetabled in Learning Common 1 and then they decide
amongst the staff that is teaching in that area, whether they are going to use the double
space for some team teaching or whether they might be going to use one of the single
spaces for their particular class on that day, and that changes all the time.
Once again I spoke about going and visiting some other schools, Mordialloc College,
Coburg Senior College and I know Don is here presenting today as well, it’s well worth a
look, he’s got some fabulous stuff happening there and some other schools there as well.
The furniture, all the things to go with a new flexible learning space are really important.
We have been really wrestling with our stage two program at the moment and just
choosing the right furniture to go into those spaces, that’s not permanent, it can be moved
around and used in other spaces is really important. And more recently we attended John
Monash Science School to have a look because stage two includes a new science area.
We’ve been very madly looking at John Monash Science School to pick up some of their
really good ideas. So, I can’t tell you the value of that enough.
Ok. We talked about all the sorts of ICT that we were going to have in this building, it’s
rich in ICT I would say. We had a fairly big budget in stage one for the senior school for
ICT and furniture, which was fantastic. In fact it was $79,000 given to ICT in the first stage
of this building. It’s funny when you get to stage two and it’s a more expensive project, the
first one was $6M, the second stage is $10.8M and we’ve been given $4,300 and
something to manage the ICT in a larger stage of the school. So, go figure with that … I’m
fighting that all the way to try and get a little bit more happening because part of the whole
shift is in being able to use learning technologies to support learning in these
environments. It’s very much reliant on it.
So, there is a whole range of things that we are trying to do. We’re not using all of these
yet but certainly a fair few of them we are, so with the visual and interactive learning,
video conferencing, we are starting to talk with other schools that have small numbers in
the classes like, physics, specialist maths, in sharing a teacher and having the students
learning by video conferencing.
The challenge is aligning timetables and things but it’s not impossible. We’re a dual
campus school as well so, we have students who can choose to go the TEC and I’m
going to show you some photos of our technical education centre as well. But if they go
over there in year 10 and they want to study say the extension maths in year 10, I don’t
think they should be precluded from doing that. So, we are trying to get some money
together to get a second one so that those students have still got access to LOTE classes
and whatever they might still want to do back at Edwards St as well. So, video streaming,
image projection, interactive whiteboards and I will show you more about those later on,
using podcasts, vodcasts, tablets, laptops, mobile phones, iPods, all of those sorts of
things, PDAs, flip cams.
We use an online learning environment, this is prior to the Ultranet but it’s a really good
lead-in for us. We use Moodle as a learning management content system and so all of the
classes, particularly at the senior level, but I’m teaching a Year 9 forensic science class at
the moment and I’ve had to learn how to use Moodle myself but it’s fantastic because the
kids get on and they enrol in the course. They can’t see anyone else’s courses, you can
choose what you let them see on there and what you don’t. You can edit things so that
they’re only visible to you and students will tell you with that environment they don’t like all
the junk. They don’t want all the bits and pieces. They just want to see the things that are
relevant specifically to them at that time. So, you can open and close things as you wish
to. It allows them to get on and have a look at the course outlines, they can see, and you
can direct them to the specific resources that you want them to use, like the Fuse
websites and all those sort of things you can put them on there so they can slip straight
into those, put a number of videos on there, you can, if you’re preparing work sheets, you
can have those on there as well.
I had my year nine science class the other day, had the video on one side, a split screen
with the questions on the other and they were all individually going through the video,
starting and stopping it, rewinding it so that they could answer the questions along the
way, save that as a word document and then submit it online for me and then I can
quickly check in there to see who has submitted it and who hasn’t and then send them an
email and say, “Can you please submit this work before you leave today?” So, it is a
really fabulous tool for allowing students to work at their own pace, to go back and revise
things, to do some work at home and as I said a fabulous lead-in to the ultranet.
My staff have quite a few questions around not wanting to let go of Moodle and moving
into the ultranet, I think I will probably use it as an I Frame for quite some time until
people, I’ll be saying to them eventually, don’t put new stuff on there, put it all onto the
ultranet and then gradually we’ll move it across as it’s updated.
Please ask if you’ve got questions as we go along. Sophie and Cameron are going to
speak later but if you’ve got questions of them as well about anything we’re saying,
please either write them down or ask them as we go. I am very happy to stop and answer
them as we go.
Question:
[inaudible 14:18] …Moodle
Speaker 1:
There are a lot of schools that use it. I had, in fact, Don Collins, his previous school,
Coburg Senior Secondary, he was using it there and so I picked it up when I was there for
a while after Don and it is a very, very easy tool to use - if I can use it, it must be easy. So,
it’s been a fabulous tool for me to learn how to use as well.
So, this is a plan of the senior school with the roof off, and I am going to move away so I
can point out some things for you. So, on here, I’ll start with the front entrance here, and
students can come in, yes, the front entrance through here and then this is the staff room
through the middle of the building here. All of the walls are very much glass, so you can
see right through from one part, right through from one stage to the other and so it really
gives a very open feel all the way through, it’s terrific for passive supervision. You don’t
necessarily need to be out wandering everywhere. As Paul said earlier because of the
glass you can see right through, so it gives a real feel of everybody sort of is being
supervised all the time.
We have our student management team up this end and the configuration doesn’t actually
look like that, it’s quite different, in fact there’s area here for seating, there’s an interview
room on either side here, so this is a bit of a staff lunch area in the middle and down here
are some of the senior staff and again it’s not configured like that, there are nowhere near
as many people in there. It’s a huge area, it’s like a ballroom, the senior school staff
room, they’re very lucky. I think we are going to pay for that further down the track with
our junior school, I don’t think there will be quite as much room in the junior school staff
room but that is something we will have to deal with along the way, so if you come back to
the front door and you come around this side.
There’s a Pathways office there for students who are looking for some direction in their
pathways and then there is a little kitchenette and we’ve actually had a second servery
built on here, that was one of the modifications we made along the way. Staff did not
originally want to share that with students, they had no intention of having students
making their toasties and their coffees and all those sort of things in that one space. One
of the things that senior students, particularly year 12s look forward to was having that
privilege of making their lunches, it’s a big deal, believe me, and I’m sure it is connected
to their learning in some way. So, we put a second servery in there and the students are
now able to access that kitchen as well.
There are some toilets through here; these are the smaller rooms that the students were
having a look in before, where those smaller classes will work. These two down the end
here are more tutorial rooms or discussion rooms, they’re not booked for classes very
often and so students are able to move in if they want to do a discussion about something
to do with their work, they can just go in there and use it at any time that it’s free.
This whole area here, is the study centre, so students have access to that at any time
they don’t have classes, they’re able to work in there, it’s got access to laptops and
desktops in there, it’s all wireless, so they are able to work in there very effectively and I’m
sure Cameron and Sophie will have some things to say about that and I have got some
video footage of some other students too, talking about that space and how they like to
use it. So, we don’t have anyone on supervision duty in there, we don’t believe we need
to because there are classes going on all around it and you can see through from the
middle senior school office.
Through the other side, if we go back over to here, this is Learning Common 3 here and
this is what I said about the three rooms coming off it so there is 1, 2, 3 rooms that come
off Learning Common 3 and so again staff will negotiate where they are going to work for
that particular lesson, depending on what they’re doing.
And then there is an operable wall, it’s about through there and that then is LC 2 in the
middle here, that’s where we have the big screen where we do a lot of presentations for
staff. Last year when our performing arts centre was being built we had our student
assemblies in here as well, there is another operable wall here, so you can open it right
up and seat 800 at a time in two goes for our students, we had our full assemblies last
year in there, last year. So, LC 2 again will seat two classes very comfortably and then
down here is the mirror image of what you have got up the other end. The student locker
bays are all around the outside of the building, so there are pathways and covered ways
all around there, so the students have access to their lockers all the time. Again they’re
supervised because you can see through, so they work very effectively, we’ve had no
issues whatsoever.
One of the biggest issues for the senior school students was that, when this was built, we
were sort of rebuilding the school from the front to the back, so this school was built on
the oval which meant they were a long, long away from the rest of the school and you will
see that in some slides a bit later on. That’s created some challenges for us in terms of
modelling of younger students with behaviour and all those sorts of things but I keep
saying to the staff in particular you need to remember that longer term, we will end up
with, sorry I didn’t bring a slide of the whole finished picture but we will end up with a
circle of buildings back again, which will be fantastic.
The canteen was another issue for senior students, it was too far to walk all the way over
to where the canteen was, so the canteen ladies had to do the old lunch order basket
didn’t they, back to primary school days to offer lunch orders in that way, so that the
students were still purchasing from the canteen.
In 2009, I’m not sure how many of you remember this day last year, but it was 43º or
something, it was a very, very hot day. And so, this is day one in the senior school, this is
in LC 2, so with that green wall there, there is now a huge screen that comes down for
projection onto that, the data projector is not even on the wall at that stage, it came very
shortly afterwards.
So, that’s our year 12 cohort having their first set of instructions for the day and for the
year. You can see the grey part there is part of the operable wall. It also has some glass
panels through it, so if there are exams going on you can see all the way through, which
is fantastic, the sound-proofing is quite amazing. It is completely sound proof, it is very
difficult to hear what’s going on in the room next door, once those doors are shut, that’s it.
Would that be a fair comment? It’s very, very quiet.
The whole building received a green four-star award, energy rating award last year. It was
in the education magazine as the greenest school in Australia and that’s for a number of
reasons which I’ll go through in a moment.
So, this is a bit about the locker bays, you can just see, they are all there, they walk
around the outside of the building. Next year we have … our senior school is becoming
years 10 to 12, so we’ll have some more lockers built to accommodate the year 10s as
well. Some of the 10s this year have some of their classes over in this space so that they
are getting used to that environment and again it’s about that role modelling of the senior
students. It is a very much an adult learning environment, so the year 10s are learning
what VCE is all about, many of them are doing VCE subjects anyway so they are over
there a lot. But that’s a really great way for them to walk into and be familiar with what’s
expected over in that building. It’s quite different.
So, this is part of the study centre, very early days and it looks a lot different to that now,
we do have some lounge chairs in there as well and some bean bags. The students are
allowed to work on bean bags as well if they choose too, in small groups; they usually use
them down the far end. You can see a little bit over in that far side into the staff room as
well.
Okay, now this video, just while Sophie is loading that up for us, I’ve had some trouble
getting it to work.
Wangaratta High School was a CeLL School, which meant that we were part of an elearning program, just pause it for a moment Sophie, and that led in to being part of a
Catalyst program which there is one school in each region across the state of Victoria
who are involved in this program and it was to trial peer coaching and use of ICT in
classrooms. And so, as part of that, Mark Dickson who is here today was involved in
coming up to Wangaratta High School and videoing some of our research and findings
from that program that we were involved in. That has now led us into being part of the
Microsoft Innovation Program. So, we are still continuing with our learning in ICT, trialling
different programs in our classrooms and that’s been a fabulous opportunity for us. So,
we’ll just have a look at this and I will give you a chance to ask any questions and have a
think about it at the end.
Video:
Welcome to Wangaratta. I’m Heather Sarau, the Principal of Wangaratta High School,
part of Hume Region. As part of the Catalyst project at Wangaratta High School we are
looking to use ICT in our flexible learning spaces. We have a team teaching approach
right throughout our senior school.
As a result of our Catalyst research, we’ve come up with a common understanding for
team teaching, which is a group of teachers working together collaboratively to improve
student outcomes in a way they couldn’t do working individually.
Team teaching is defined by our timetable and that is that a group of teachers, whether
it’s usually two or three are allocated the appropriate number of students, whether that is
50 or 75 and it is up to those teachers, really, to define how they will work with those
students.
In the classroom we move in and out of team teaching situations where one may be the
facilitator, it could be someone helping them do a lecture type forum and the kids are
taking notes. Sometimes it is involved in direct explicit teaching in separate classrooms.
Team teaching for me is where I am able to utilise the expertise of another teacher in the
classroom, where we can work with and off each other in a way, so that we can perform
our best for the students in the areas we are most confident. It also allows us to keep in
touch with each other as to how we are delivering the content and how we are assessing
content, so there is a consistency there. It also frees up one teacher to be the presenter, if
you like, while the other is like a manager or a monitor around the classroom and we can
trade those positions as we choose throughout a session of 90 minutes.
Our online environment enables staff to put their course outlines onto the system, it allows
access for students both at school and at home, it allows students to submit their work
online, so that staff can be monitoring and giving feedback to students about their work on
a very regular basis, it allows them to check what work is being submitted and catch up
with those who haven’t, in a much more effective and efficient way.
The learning management system that is here at Wangaratta High School has been
developed and is crucial and it is underpinning everything that is team teaching. It has
improved the student/student relationship and it has improved the student/teacher
relationship and it has improved the parent/student and teacher relationship.
We’ve got the kids who are basically doing independent learning and they get to choose
which style of information technology that they choose to use. They have access to a lot
of computers, there are lots of laptops around in the room as you can see. They’re able to
go online and access various documents. We have a web quest that they’re completing.
When they have finished doing that they can upload that and we as teachers can see
their progress with that, some of them are making podcasts on the topic which is sleep
phenomena and sleep disorders. They have access to the YouTube videos that can give
them that visual component that they need and a real life example of the disorders that
they are investigating; all the way through to their text books and their CD Rom version of
their text book as well.
Team teaching is fantastic when you get your relationship organised at the outset, you get
your goals you want to achieve, clear, between the two of you and then you go ahead and
deliver it. You need to reflect upon it as you go along and be flexible and have a lot of
sense of humour as you’re going along but it is invaluable for the kids, the kids get so
much out of it, if they’ve got the right physical space in which they can learn.
After having worked in a closed classroom for so long, to work with another teacher is
very strong in terms of professional learning, so you see other teachers in action and they
see you in action and you take bits from them, you get ideas and it’s a real pooling
together of good teaching practice really.
I thought I’d hate it. I’m the old fashioned teacher, who used to chalk and talk and when I
started teaching it was literally chalk on a blackboard. I owned my class and that was it,
and the thought of moving into team teaching filled me with horror. After the first few times
of doing it I would never turn back, I love it and it just gives me so much more professional
quality and job satisfaction than I had before and I didn’t know it existed.
Speaker 1:
That’s not necessarily a reflection of where all of our staff are at; in fact it’s definitely not.
Some people are embracing this and can’t wait and want to do it all the time, others don’t
want to know anything about it yet and still have their own classroom and their own door
shut and are planning with others but not teaching with others and so we’ve still got a long
way to go yet, particularly with our senior staff.
So, now it’s a chance for you just to do a little bit of reflection and spend just a couple of
minutes, just on your own first of all just thinking about what does or what would it look
like back in your schools, what would you want to do more of, and what would you need
to do less of? So, just have a think about that and I will give you a chance to share with
some others perhaps from another school around you.
I am going to probably cut you short there, sorry, we don’t have a lot of time but is there
anyone who would like to share a comment or ask a question at this point?
Just say where you’re from.
Question:
I’m from Nathalia which is quite the opposite to Wangaratta. We’ve got 110 kids in the
whole school but we also have very few, a very small staff. Now we’ve got a lot of not
problems but blockers with team teaching with curriculum and expertise and things like
that and just being able to get physically the staff in the same spot, so you, you know,
we’ve got a lot of part-timers, that sort of thing. Did you have any issues about getting
teams together that were going to be consistent throughout the year, or throughout the
whole program that you’re running this?
Speaker 1:
Great question and that continues to be a problem for us. We have nearly 30% of our
staff are part-time, which is massive and so having that time to work together and make
sure that they are doing the planning and having that consistency of the team teaching
approach. For instance, in year 7 and 8 we combine our English and humanities into
Communication & Society and maths and science into Engineering and so the teams that
worked in year 7 last year, absolutely without fail want to be in those same teams in the
following year.
Now, as we all know, we have staff leave and new ones come in and groups don’t quite
match up with where you want them to be, and spaces become unavailable for whatever
reason and so, keeping that consistency is a real issue for us. We are working very, very
hard towards that and it will become a lot easier once we have our junior school online as
well because we will then be two sub-schools, middle and senior and most people then
will teach the majority of either senior classes or junior and so they will be in that space
and working together much more often than they are at the moment. That’s one of the big
frustrations we’ve got. Good question. Anyone else?
Question:
I assume that we are going to have a lot of problems to adapt the new way of teaching but
did you improve your results as a school?
Speaker 1:
Absolutely and I will get to that and I’m sure Cam and Sophie will talk about that.
Question:
Obviously we have to focus.
Speaker 1:
Yes, of course, it’s all about the student learning outcomes, absolutely.
Question:
So, you have data out?
Speaker 1:
We have our student attitudes to school data, is showing a significant increase in
connection to the school and their peers. Motivation to learn, stimulating learning
environment, a lot of those different measures are improving significantly at our senior
levels. And that’s a really big improvement and when you hear from some of the students
that I’ve got on the next video as well, they will tell you that it is helping them to commit
themselves more. They feel obliged to work harder because they can be seen all the time,
it really is making a big difference, and our VCE results from last year were higher than
we expected from that cohort of students.
Now that’s not just about the buildings at all, and I agree with Paul. It’s about the teacher
and we’ve spent a lot of time building the capacity of those teachers to work in that
environment to make sure that they are doing the best they can for the kids. Yes,
absolutely. We might leave it there and move on, if anyone else has got a question, they
might like to ask it later on.
So, what is special about Wangaratta High School? We were the first school in Australia
to have geo-thermal climate control heating and cooling systems. Sounds all very fancy
and it is. This slide gives you just a snapshot of what it’s like. We have, those stripes
down on the far side there are pipes that are 100 metres down in the ground and it has
water running through the system which allows … the whole slab is fitted with all the pipes
and coils and all the heating and cooling comes up through the floor. You would have
seen in some of the photos and you will see in some more the big industrial fans that are
on the roof, we don’t touch those. They are controlled automatically and they come on
and off to spread, move the air about, move the heating and cooling up or down
depending on whether it is hot or cold outside. The first three days that we had in 2009,
the staff development days, were 45º and you walked into that building and you would just
never have known. It was like being on another planet. It sits between 18 and 24º all year
round, so students don’t have to wear jumpers if they don’t want to, it’s a very consistent
temperature, so that also assists them, I believe with their learning.
As a Phys Ed Teacher, I hated working in classrooms that were stinking hot; you know be
opening windows and gasping for air, kids get really dopey and tired in hot rooms. So, it’s
a really great environment that is conducive, I believe, to good learning. The windows are
all double glazed. There is extra sound proofing in all the walls and ceilings, so the noise
volume in the building is very low. We use the rain water for the flushing of the toilets and
all that sort of thing. So, all of those components allowed us to get that four star energy
rating which was fantastic. To get the five star you had to have a railway line virtually at
your doorstep. We were never going to rebuild Wangaratta’s railway line, so that is where
we finished up, so we are very, very proud of it, and the whole school, as each stage is
completed, it will all be like this.
What were the apprehensions about this new environment that we were moving into?
This is really, I suppose, from a staff and student point of view, they were really worried,
as I said, about taking their stuff over there and being in this fish bowl as they were all
calling it. No quiet time, you’re there on tap the whole time for students. So, personal
space was going to be an issue, where do I go to get away from them, if I don’t really
want to be a part of what’s going on at the moment? Too much distraction from other
classes, how am I possibly going to work in this environment when I can see what’s
happening next door?
Having to work with another teacher instead of being in control of your own group was a
big issue for some people; too accessible to students and other staff. My teaching might
be exposed, am I up to scratch, am I going to feel like I’m under the microscope? Is
someone going to be saying afterwards, “I saw what you did in there and that wasn’t
really what you should be doing?” There was a real fear about that.
So, along with developing this approach, the first thing I think you have to do is build trust
and work out the protocols for planning and team teaching so that you really have a
shared understanding and respect for each other in the way you are going to be different
and none of us teach exactly the same way. So, it was about complementing each other
and obviously we were never going to force people to be involved in that situation. It
needed to be a voluntary thing. And we are finding that more and more people are
wanting to come on board with it because they can see the benefits of it and you heard
some of that on the previous video.
So, how is it now? Staff have built excellent relationships with the students and that
comes through in our data very clearly. They’re sharing expertise, they’re learning from
each other, so it has become a more professional learning environment every time they
step into the classroom and even when they’re working in that shared space in the
middle.
Building confidence of individuals, having graduate teachers working with expert teachers
and gaining knowledge from each other, the experts certainly also learn a lot from our
younger more inexperienced staff and so it is a terrific environment for the students to
have that connection with perhaps someone that is younger and can relate to them in a
different way, complementing those that have the greater amount of experience.
So, we were moving away from, and we continue to, I continue to remind the staff of the
fact that it is ‘our’ students, ‘our’ classrooms, ‘our’ results, ‘our’ accountability, it’s not
‘mine’ anymore. We’re opening the doors and saying that we are all in this together. And I
have spent time this year looking at our staff opinion data and saying, if curriculum coordination is low there, that’s not about who is leading the curriculum, that’s about all of us
working together and so if that’s low, what are ‘we’ going to do about that to make it
better? That’s the approach we’re taking.
They have learnt to be flexible and resilient to change because, let’s face it, things are
changing so quickly all the time, that it’s just become part of what we do and it’s about
being able to work with that, not necessarily at the same pace, you know, it’s like any
classroom, there’s a mixed ability group and different paces of learning, so we need to
consider that as well.
What were the students thinking? Too much distraction from other classes and I did go
around and ask the students, these are not just my thoughts, too noisy, the fans going on
and off above their heads, took them a little while to get use to that. First of all it sounded
a bit like an aeroplane taking off, that was the description that was used but now I don’t
think they even notice when they happen. It’s funny when we have information nights,
parents will often go, ooh, and I say to them it’s ok, you will get used to it, it’s a novelty for
them because they’re not there all the time but those that are working in those spaces,
don’t notice them at all.
‘Don’t want to work with more than one teacher, I like this person and I want to have them
all to ourselves and I don’t want to share with this person over there, I don’t like them so
much’, so there is a bit of that but I think again, students have become used to that and
they know now that not one person has all that knowledge, so they can get assistance
with different areas of expertise amongst the staff.
‘Too much supervision’; In an old VCE common room they could kick the footy around
and do some things perhaps they shouldn’t do and in this environment, they simply can’t
or if they do, it doesn’t happen for very long, because we certainly don’t have footys
kicked around but it’s conducive to good learning. It’s about the learning for the students.
And also all the VCE classes are in that one space, most of the time, they still go off with
their specialist areas but on the whole that is their space and they have really great
ownership of it, we’ve had very little damage through the whole two years that we’ve been
there. It looks brand new still, so that’s fantastic.
The students say they feel more obliged to work harder. They can’t hide, they can be
seen everywhere, they have better support, the staff are on hand all the time, so they can
go and ask a question if they’ve got a spare period and they can see their teacher in
there, they can go and ask for help and often that happens. Greater levels of connection,
again that comes through again in our data. Adult learning environment – quieter, better
facilities, the ICT does make a difference to them, they’ve got more accessibility. They
don’t necessarily need to go to the library which is still a fair walk, it’s the other side of the
canteen they don’t walk to, to get their lunch, so at the moment, I would say very few
senior students actually use the library as it is at the moment.
Staff support, we’ve had unfortunately in the last two years, we’ve had four student deaths
happen in our school. So, this year we had a year 12 boy who passed away in May. And
to have that building, where all the kids felt safe and able to just chill out and do their own
thing and have that connection with the staff, walking over there on that day, there were
little pockets, groups of students sitting around, teachers were just moving in amongst
them, there were kids across the road at someone’s house and we brought them all back
and said look, just come and be here, we’re all here together and that’s ok. We bought
them toasted sandwiches for lunch, we just, it has a real feel of home and I think they feel
very safe and very nurtured there. That’s a really important part of year 12, in particular,
when things are getting very stressful at this time of the year. So, it has been a fantastic
opportunity for them.
A far greater commitment to study, huge improvement in that. Less drama, I think in the
old, and one of the teachers talks about this, there can be a little hysteria too, something
happens over the weekend and it affects what happens back at school on Monday and
there is far less of that outburst of big deal, when perhaps it’s not, they’ve dealt with it in a
more calm way by both the teachers and the students.
There is greater role modelling as I said before and the stronger connection. And this is
very amateurish this one because I did this one myself, the other one was done by Mark
Dickson from the department. So, what I did was I walked over the to senior school, I
gave them no notice at all that this was going to happen, I walked around and said to a
couple of teachers and a couple of students, I’m going to come back in two or three
minutes, can you just talk to me about, what would be good about being over here or not
so good,
Video/Audio: How do you feel about what you’re doing [inaudible 45:48] ?, and I do apologise to for the
microphone. Before we moved into the senior school we were in the tin shed, that was
where the year 11 and 12 students used to study, their classrooms were spread all over
the school and if you needed to chase a student, you needed to go and find them in their
classroom. It was very noisy, when they were studying, even when they were quiet it was
still quite loud, so it wasn’t conducive to good study. Now over here we have a very quiet
building, once we shut the doors, you really can’t hear what is going on in the other
classrooms. When we first moved in here it was a little bit like a fish bowl, all of the
classrooms were surrounded by glass and the teaching, the staff area was also
surrounded by glass, but after a while you just don’t notice it and you just get on with and
if things happen in the classroom you don’t even see. The kids really like it over there, it’s
very quiet, allows for a range of teaching techniques. Sometimes we’re in multi classroom
areas, sometimes we are on our own. The only minus is and I think it’s important you get
the minuses, is sometimes we don’t have space to break-out like we would but most of
the time you’ve got the areas.
I’m Mr. Swanston, I’m year 11 co-ordinator. This is my first year in the senior school
[telephone ringing]. …some nice open spaces and they have the opportunity to walk in
when they see fit so that’s been a good student/ teacher kind of connection. I’m team
teaching, I’m teaching year 12 for the first time, so that team teaching has been
worthwhile for me because having an experienced teacher in the classroom has been
invaluable, for my learning experience. There are some negatives to it I think, we are
always stuck in that space, so there is no flexibility at the moment so having some
flexibility would be good sometimes. Having connection and the ability to be really close to
the senior staff is really good, being right there I can just grab them whenever I like and
talk about students and stuff like that, so I really enjoyed myself the first day.
I was actually looking forward to seeing how the new building was and how it was going to
work and be different compared to the old school and eventually, it was actually good and
enjoyed my first day. It was really cool in here, it was a very hot day, the building had
cool floors so we came in here at lunchtime and it’s been good for the last year. M VCE
has been much better than it would have been in the old school.
I think this space is good to use as frees but the classroom, it’s always going to be a
classroom, your learning pretty much depends on your teachers and what you do with
[inaudible 49:25]
I must admit when we first moved over to the senior school [inaudible 49:31] being an
older teacher I was used to taking a class of my own and developing a strong rapport with
20/25 students. I was very much frightened of the prospect of having 50 students in a
classroom and a teacher and sharing that. As it has turned out, it has turned out
extremely well, and I really enjoy the collegiate and working with a team to deliver
curriculum so long as there is a break-out area that I can focus on as well. There is a
need for small spaces sometimes, which we do have and so there are times when we
follow the timetable correctly, we are able to actually move into those areas as well and
work with our smaller groups, it’s working really well.
Actually the senior building was an exciting move but there are a lot of people that were
quite apprehensive about having the glass walls on the staff room, that the students
would be looking in at us all the time, but having been here, we realise that the students
don’t look in on us and we don’t really look out on them either, so that it makes no
difference at all. The open learning spaces are now really good. It has taken a lot of time
for both the staff and the students to get used to them but now we all realise the
opportunities that they produce for us.
LC4 is probably the best room in the whole senior school because it is a very large area
and it’s for study and it gives us the opportunity as year 12s in our study period to go into
the little rooms and work in small quiet groups, or stay in a big area and work in groups or
go off by yourself and it is really beneficial. And the fact that everyone is always working
and it motivates you to work.
The technology that we have got in the senior school is really good with the laptops we
use in our classes, the computers and printers and things in the study centre and the
team teaching, whiteboards and things like that where, we probably wouldn’t have that
opportunity on the other side of the school but it’s really helped us.
What I like about the senior school best is that because it is mainly year 11 and 12
students, it’s a very mature learning environment; there is a lot less disruption in the
classes because often most of the kids are working and it motivates those who are less
motivated to work harder and always be concentrating.
I think the layout of the whole senior school is really good for quality individuals and the
year levels and things like the locker bays and the classrooms, they’re all set out very well
to efficiently work around and also the heating and cooling systems are very reliable and
consistent, so you don’t come in one morning and it’s different to what it was yesterday,
yeah less distraction.
Student:
What’s different about the new senior school is like compared to the old school it’s a much
bigger and more open learning environment and just the whole atmosphere of it, is so
much more mature and like you go into the classroom and even to the senior school at
the start of the day and instead of ‘it’s just another day at school, it’s crap, just let’s get the
work done and then we can muck around or whatever at recess and lunch’.
Student:
For me it’s, and a few of the males, we like to run around at lunch time and recess and get
a bit hot and sweaty and then we come in our classroom and have to do our work and you
put your books down on the table and know that you’re not going to be rubbing shoulders
with the bloke next to us because we have got these big massive tables so we can lay our
pencil case off to the side and notes in front of us, loose pack on the other side, so we
have got plenty of room to do our own thing. So, it’s yeah really good.
Student:
The impact it’s had on my learning is, especially with the bigger spaces and having the
team teaching is, like for English I have two teachers and if maybe like one of the teachers
explains an essay structure to me one way and you are just not getting it, no matter how
they explain it, you go to the other teacher and maybe they will have a method to help you
get It and you’ve got more, like, sources of information and also with the team teaching, if
you have someone out the front running the lesson, there is somebody else sort of
walking around and you can ask them questions without sort of holding up the whole class
and stuff.
Student:
Also with having those two teachers around the classroom, you can always grab their help
when you want it, or you can grab the table by yourself and work really independently so
that’s what I really like about the new senior school. If you really want to knuckle down
you just grab a table by yourself, stay away from your mates and you can work really hard
in the hour and half you have in that class. Really helps with my learning, I’m probably
speaking for not just me but a few other people in the school, yeah it is really independent
but you can get that help from the teachers when you want it.
Student:
The best thing about the senior school is probably the environment or the atmosphere; it
is so much more professional and let’s get work done and also the LC4 the study space
because in the junior school you didn’t really have something like that. We had the library
but nobody really used the library except to borrow books, and so it is a really positive sort
of study environment with the teachers on hand if you need help.
Student:
Best thing about the senior school is … not just saying this … but there is plenty of good
things about it; mainly the independence, it is just amazing, the teachers know that we’re
in year 11 and 12 now and they can see just you know, see you working off in the corner
and come over and ask if you are working alright, or they can just leave you alone, so
that’s something that I really enjoy. But you know, and as well the teachers are always
learning, it kind of makes it like an even playing field. You’re learning your maths and
they’re kind of still learning how to teach in front of 50 kids, so, they enjoy a bit of a joke,
but you know, they know we’re here to learn so they get the job done, it’s good.
Student:
I wouldn’t really change much except for maybe it is really open, and come exam study
time, having all the rooms with windows sometimes gets a bit distracting, maybe a room
with no windows so you can just sit down and do your practice exams come exam time
would probably be good.
Student:
Again there’s not too much I would change about the senior school, I’m not saying this
because Miss Sarau made me say this, yeah, it is really a good school but the learning
environment is great, one thing maybe is that big industrial fan, they painted the outside of
it yellow, so if you stick your eyes up, you’re stuck watching that for a little bit but beside
from that I think it’s really good, it is really a good place to sit down and do your work.
Speaker 1:
I will give you a chance at the end if you wish to ask Sophie and Cameron any questions,
we really didn’t plan any of that, I just said to them, these are the questions I am going to
ask, you have a think and tell them from your own experience what it has really been like.
We are going to have to rush though these last ones. So, this is a bit symbolic because,
this is the senior school built on the oval, it is a real trek across to that senior school. At
the moment where those students are walking where that path is, is where stage two is
being built, so not only is it a long trek, it is further at the moment as we walk outside the
school virtually, and around, to get to the senior school and back again, so it is providing
some very big challenges. I keep saying to people you have to focus on what’s coming
and what we’re going to look forward to in the future when it is all done.
These are some snapshots of our stage two. This is the technology space and again this
will house up to three classes at one time in technology. There might be a metal and
wood going on at the same time in there and again that’s about perhaps using design and
technology in a different way to what they’ve been doing, its not about my woodwork room
and doing what I have always done in woodwork, it’s about looking at opportunities for
perhaps inviting different opportunities for students in their learning and allowing them to
be more creative.
It’s also going to allow, this is part of the science area, and again there is a big open
learning space in the middle of that, there are two open labs that have benches at the
front of them and open into that learning space in the middle. It’s going to allow for some
modelling of the senior students that will be working in some of those classrooms and
juniors to see what’s going on in there and what they might be aspiring to if they’re going
to study physics in year 12 and what have you. So, it’ll allow for that greater amount of
sharing.
Again science; these are over at the technical education centre and again they have
classes over there, they have no walls, they have no choice over there about shutting
doors. There are a couple of classrooms that do but most of them are completely open.
And so, what we are trying to do overall is develop a Wangaratta High School best
practice and next practice in team teaching. And we’re still working on what really works
well and what doesn’t work so well.
I’ll have to rush through, keep going, keep going, they’re all of the technical education
centre. That’s the building area, it’s a multi-trades workshop, at the top, this building is
actually on the TAFE site but our students are there full time, they have Wangaratta High
School classes as well as their VET components on that one space, but they’re there full
time in years 10 to 12.
So, where to from here? We’re looking at a stage three as well; we will be building a new
junior school that will have our new resource centre as the hub of that building, a new
gymnasium with a community health precinct attached to it and a new oval, so we have
got a lot of work still to do. I think we are still in the early stages.
One of the things we want to do is continue to use our ICT so that we can showcase
what’s happening in other rooms. We have got some great stuff happening in pockets but
it’s not always the chance for staff to go and have a look and see what’s happening in
other parts of the school. So, it’s about providing that time, as Paul said, to share the
learning and make sure that we are continuing to develop each other in our professional
learning meetings.
I wanted to finish with this and this is just for you to think about, something new for you
that came out of today, something that was perhaps confirmed for you in what I have
presented and something that you are still thinking about and would like to explore further.
Is there anything that you would like to ask Cameron or Sophie before we finish up?
Thank you very much for attending. I hope you got something out of it.
For more information about the topics discussed in this podcast please visit the Department of Education
and Early Childhood Development's website – education.vic.gov.au