It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to the community of St John’s Primary School.
As educators, we find ourselves in a world full of new challenges for our young people. We are responsible for raising Generation Alpha, the first generation of children not to have known a world without touchscreen technology. We also find ourselves in a world where knowledge is doubling exponentially and long term industries are being disrupted every day by technological advances. By the time this generation enters the workforce, it is estimated that 45 per cent of currently existing jobs will have disappeared thanks to digital disruption.
As Educators, we are being asked to equip this generation with 21st-century learning skills because today’s students are being shaped in a time very different from the ones we grew up in. Consider this, in the 50 years leading up to 2000 we had learnt more about everything than we had learnt in the prior 3500 years! In the last 20 years that knowledge has doubled again. Your children will be better educated than you were and live in a world with far greater knowledge than you could have ever imagined when you went to school. Sobering thoughts indeed!
How do you educate children in a world where knowledge is expanding so rapidly? It starts with new strategies and approaches to setting expectations and communicating. Technology has provided a whole new range of learning tools and pedagogies. Game-based learning, interactive or immersive learning are rapidly becoming the norm. Common pedagogical methods are being reinvented through open-ended or inquiry-based instruction.
Our aim at St John’s is to ensure that every time your child starts a new year with a new teacher, they get the growth they need. Teachers place a greater focus on teaching to a student’s point of need as a way of developing the conditions for personalised learning in a more collaborative style environment. We encourage students to know their own thoughts, understand how they learn and practise what they preach.
At St John’s, students learn within this context and in dialogue with our Catholic traditions. Our Catholic learning community encourages each learner to understand themselves, to understand others and to understand our faith more deeply.
‘To know God is to know yourself, to know yourself is to know the world.’ Anon
Deep learning in our Catholic School is a process that respects diverse cultures, worldviews and the backgrounds of all our learners. At St John’s, we believe that learning brings hope and new possibilities for each and every one of us.