Last Friday, during our student free day, the staff at Charles Campbell College continued the exploration of the latest thinking in education and how we could apply it to our work. Education as we know it today, is based on the American system founded over 100 years ago. We organised our schools into subject disciplines, our learning spaces into these areas, and put our students in rows with the teacher at the front of the class.
The world has changed and the requirements for students to be successful in their personal and professional lives have changed, therefore requiring us to adapt our practices. We know now that students need to have good literacy and numeracy skills, as well as critical and creative thinking, be technologically savvy, possess sound social and ethical capabilities and intercultural understanding.
For us to adapt to this changing world and equip students, we need a growth mindset, failure mindset (learn from our mistakes), focus on the process and the outcome and master the art of questioning, the grapple and the art of feedback. We can work within the boundaries of standardised tests, expectations and regulations by our attitudes, our structures and processes and what we focus on.
We plan to share our learning, with students, parents and the wider community. To do this we will begin by providing information about these and other topics to students through learning opportunities in their classes, through pastoral care sessions (PGL), and to parents and the community through our news feeds and other avenues of parent and community engagement. This will help equip families with knowledge so that they can support this initiative at home.
I believe we are up to this challenge and will positively affect the lives and outcomes of the students we work so hard to support.