What
Works planning
Paul Hon is Campus Principal at the junior
school. He discusses some of the issues he sees for the
school, and the way planning has been assisted by What
Works:
 Back
in Echuca High School days we had a focus on our Koorie
kids. We has some good Koorie topics in the curriculum
and one staff member per year was going up to the Northern
Territory with VUT to work for a month in Aboriginal
communities. But in a merged school, with a large building
program going on and a lot of other things to think about,
we'd lost some of that.
I saw What Works as a wonderful opportunity
to start planning again, and I realised that we had new
staff members who hadn't had the same background.
So here was an opportunity to consolidate and decide
what direction we needed to take. |
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The biggest issue for us with Indigenous kids is really to get them staying
at school beyond Year 9 or 10. There are many aspects to that of course and
I think the larger school can offer them so much in terms of breadth of curriculum.
Even for kids who have left school (or who are on the point of leaving) we're
working on getting pre-apprenticeship programs going. But we've got
to get them here first. So the challenge is to be able to engage all kids
in our curriculum.
Another
part of that is to get parents to support what the school is doing. This
is the old site of Echuca Technical School and way back in the 70's
and 80's many people in the Koorie community didn't have a good
relationship with the tech. There's some history there and because
of that it's obvious that we need to build some bridges.
In
our What Works planning we came up with a target that teachers of Koorie
students should make positive contact with students' families at least
once per term. Too often we're only in touch with parents when something
has gone wrong or the kid is in trouble. In the end we want parents to be
comfortable about coming up to the school but we've got to work on
our relationships and include Koorie people more. That's the important
thing and we've worked on quite a few strategies.
Look
at the strategies ...
Josh Wanganeen is the Koorie Educator at Echuca College.
I've
found that the action planning with What Works has really helped
me. No matter what I'm doing it's good because it helps
to keep me organised and I can jot things down on it that I need
to do. So it helps to keep the priorities there.
We need to break down the barriers between teachers
and parents. Even if it's just regular, five minute phone calls
about good things the kid has done in class, that will help. We're
aiming for positive contact with parents once a term at the moment,
but we think about once every three or four weeks would be ideal.
I already ring parents quite often. If teachers
tell me in the staffroom about things a kid has done, then I'll
make a note of it and give the parents a call. Sometimes they think
the worst when they get a call from the school, but I want them to
get positive feedback when a student is doing well.
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I do a lot of home visits as well, and if a kid has been in
trouble I try to give the parents some good news when the kid gets back on
track. Parents want their kids to be happy at school. It's a big thing
for them.
Getting kids coming to school has got to do with having good programs here
and the relationships teachers have with the Koorie kids (and their parents
for that matter).
The
new school building is organised so that a number of teachers are working
with larger groups of kids. That means that there are different learning
strategies going on and it doesn't always depend on one teacher with
one student. That seems to make it easier for a lot of kids and there have
been fewer incidents. Maybe it's easier in this setting for teachers
to deal with things before they blow up.
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