The Catholic School Leaders Podcast

Allison Elcoate
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Catholic School Leaders Podcast, where today it is my pleasure to welcome three of our friends from Australia to the show today. And today we're going to be talking about good teaching.

Versus quality teaching and a project and a way of approaching things that they are doing in Australia That's very unique. And I think it's something that you're really gonna enjoy hearing about so today It's my pleasure to welcome Allison the principal of Trinity College in Beanlay. It's a Secondary school.

She's been a Catholic educator for over 20 years and in the middle senior leadership for the majority of this time. She's led learning in several schools, including remote communities in Outback, Western, and Northern Queensland, and she was the winner of the Dr. John Dwyer Award, and excellence in teaching and leadership in [00:01:00] 2023 as a result of the innovations that we're going to be talking about today at Trinity.

Also, my privilege to welcome Michael Blundell. He is an innovative pedagogy leader at Trinity College in Bean Lake, has an extensive background in Catholic education for six years, primarily within the arts and music. He brings extensive experience with the corporate and performance worlds prior to his career in education.

And finally, Michael Parker is the student academic performance and growth leader at Trinity College. He's been in education for five years, primarily in STEM, digital technologies, eSports, business, and humanities. With a background in business prior to moving into education, the link between school, business, and technological advancements has always been at the forefront of his educational philosophy.

He has a passion for modern education that's tailored to generations Alpha and Beta by allowing them to design an education, [00:02:00] not to be defined by one. So welcome everybody! How you doing today?

Thank you, John. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thank you. You made us

sound really good. oh man, it wasn't hard to do. This is so, so great here, and uh, I know Allison and I were speaking about our mastermind group a couple weeks ago, and I said, I wish we were recording this, because this is so cool what you're doing down there, and she said, well let's set something up, and so I'm so happy that we were able to do that today.

Tell our listeners a little bit, first and foremost, about your school, because especially here in the United States, when we hear college, automatically, probably a lot of folks minds go to university status. So tell us a little bit about your school and kind of the age ranges you serve.

Definitely, John. So we are a co educational Catholic education school, which means that we are a secondary school. So similar to a high school that you would have in the US. So we cater to about a thousand students from years seven to 12 in Australia. So that's typically ages between 11 and 18. [00:03:00] Where we're situated, we're actually sitting smack bang between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, which means that the range of students that we actually get are quite diverse in socio economic background, particularly because of our location, so it does add quite a dimension to where we're at, and we have students who will travel over an hour to get to us, and some students who can easily walk across the road.

It's a very diverse school.

That's awesome. That's awesome. And when we talked, you shared with me some of those very interesting, something that you observed in your teachers a year or two ago, and you said to me the teachers were leaving the building exhausted, and yet the students were full of energy. And this led to some really interesting conversations and strategies that you've, taken at your school.

Talk to us a little bit about what you're doing at your school that's so unique.

I think it's probably something that a lot of educators, particularly leaders in education, are noticing, that [00:04:00] teacher workplace intensification is increasing. We know that, in the media and society, teachers do get a little bit of a bad rap as well. there's that misconception that we have so many weeks of holiday a year, all of these sorts of things.

However, we know that teachers are overwhelmed, they're overworked. And we started to have a bit of a look at that. And one of the things that we were noticing was that teachers would be working very hard. They would be pretty much going home of an afternoon straight after school, collapsing on a couch and waking up again the next day and doing the same thing again.

However, when the students were in the room, You would notice that some would leave lively, but they were also starting to become lethargic and not lethargic through doing excessive amounts of work. So what we started to notice as a team was really that there was a misplaced cognitive load. So the majority of the thinking that was happening in our classrooms was by the teacher.

And that was simple things like questioning, [00:05:00] where the teacher is the one who's having to do a lot of work, and we've all been in those classes before, where you might put something as simple as 6 plus 3 on the board, and you're asking the students, Alright everybody, 6 3, Johnny, do you know what 6 plus 3 is?

Cindy, do you know what 6 plus 3 is? Okay, everybody, it's nine because the students know if they wait long enough, we're just going to tell them the answer. And so the thinking keeps coming back to the teacher and the teacher is leaving the room mentally exhausted. Not only did they plan the lesson, but in most cases, they're doing most of the lesson.

And so we started to wonder who's doing the work here and where is the actual learning happening? And is the learning occurring where it should be? Because if the cognitive load is on the teacher, how are we getting the maximum amount of quality learning time with our students in these rooms? And so that became a really important thing for

us.

And they were doing it all alone. Teachers were by themselves, working in silos, carrying that burden without [00:06:00] really having the opportunity, I suppose, to work together, work with the other teachers, bring out the best qualities in each of us. And then obviously that translates to the students as well. If they're not seeing the work that we're doing, collaboratively working together for the future, then they're not going to be able to do that for themselves.

And I think that leads to something that, that really, is a different approach. So you're seeing that, whoa, boy, the kids are the ones that are kind of watching. And Alice, you even described it to me, you said, I feel like they were watching a YouTube channel. because the teachers were, were doing everything and the kids were just sitting there.

And I think we see that so many times where it's just, you know, sit down, turn your phones off, be quiet for the next hour and a half and, and listen to what I'm going to say, and to me, that's, not the best way for learning. And so what you've done is you've done something that's actually very proactive on that, and so you had to approach your teachers and you approach somebody and said, hey, Let's try something different.

Let's try something that is very unique and very unheard of. Allison, what was the idea that you [00:07:00] had?

we started to have a bit of a think about what we should do, and the best part of, I think, our college is that we actually have a great team. So we have teachers who are willing to give it a go. And that doesn't mean that everybody is at this point in time, most people are, but there is a bit of a fear factor around that.

So I guess once we started to think about, well, what do we do? How do we make the students do more of the learning here? How, how do we make sure that they're carrying the majority of the cognitive load that's happening in this classroom? And so we started to explore things like questions and, the techniques that we actually do within the classroom, but everybody's done that and we haven't gotten anywhere with those sorts of things before.

So then we started to ask the bigger questions. Why are we doing what we're doing? And is that for our benefit? as teachers, because that's what we're comfortable with, because perhaps that was how we went to school and how we were taught to teach. But does that actually suit this new generation? And the [00:08:00] best part is, is that probably among the two people that I asked, first of all, let's do something different.

Let's not do any planning. And let's go in and meet our students first and go from there is actually the two Michaels who are here today. So I'll, I'll hand over to Michael Parker because Michael was probably the first one that I spoke to, and said to him, right, let's try something different. And we'd be interested to hear your reaction to that Michael.

Thanks Alison. Yeah, my first initial reaction as a young leader, was, what do we need to do differently? And, I guess putting the question out, how are we going to assess these students? How are we going to make them, I guess have an individualized learning pathway that's going to suit them?

What is the big inquiry question? Why am I picking this subject? For example, STEM, how am I picking this? What am I doing in this lesson? Why am I designing everything for them, without actually knowing them initially? So first of all, working out. what they want and then diving from there using the [00:09:00] inquiry approach.

And what was your big question when I first said to you about this? Because you had a lot of concerns when we first

started. Yeah, I definitely had a lot of questions. coming in and looking at how's, how are we going to have an individualized learning? pathway for each individual student. I was so worried about collecting evidence.

how am I going to tick off all these boxes in the curriculum? , we've got this norm where we've got to teach the whole curriculum and, I had so many questions as a young leader.

And I think that's where it is right there. I mean, just think about this one now. I want you to envision this one for our principals out there. Allison walks in and talks to Michael and says, Michael, I don't want you to plan anything, that's where really the question starts with here.

Is I don't want you to plan anything. Now for, just for our teachers, especially here in the United States, I mean, we're planning for months and months and months and months, or you're going to reuse a lesson that maybe you used in the past, or things like that. So for a principal to walk in and say to a teacher, I don't want you to plan anything, but instead I want to start with seeing where the [00:10:00] students are at.

Michael, tell me about that conversation and kind of where you as a teacher then start with your classroom. What's that first day of school look like for you?

Yeah, 100 percent John. Initially, I thought, what's the catch? I think having some reassurance that I wasn't going to get into trouble for not being organized, I think was, Something that was relevant going into a classroom, not knowing the direction I was, I was panicking.

I was, I was like, am I a good teacher right now? Am I doing the students justice by not knowing the direction of where the lesson is going to go? So going in. And, and getting to know the students and finding out what they actually want from the subject first, and then getting them to develop their learning pathway.

And we're developing that as we go along. it's not something that I've pre developed or designed earlier, whether it be the evening beforehand, the week before, school holidays, whether, you know. So I think [00:11:00] going in and, and really. working and co constructing the learning students is, is really important.

I can I just say, Michael is quite an intuitive leader with that, in the fact that he was quite, um, I don't know that he necessarily voiced every concern that he had, but he was quite good at being able to do that. And I guess one of the first things that, Michael would say is, well, what if I don't get this right?

What if I'm wrong? Or what if I do this in the wrong way? Because there is nothing Like this, what he is inventing every single day with a brand new group of students is unique to them. And that's why I said to him, well, I employed a professional, so I know that this is going to be done right. I don't know, Michael saying that, you know, I'm not really sure if it needs to be in a certain way, but he knew what the goal was.

He's a trained STEM teacher or, you know, in Michael Blundell's case, an arts teacher. They do know where these students are headed. They [00:12:00] don't need a 16 page document with tick boxes to explain how they've met certain goals out of a curriculum. They can do this and it can actually be much more accessible to the students and can actually in the long term be a lot less work for the teacher as

well.

And I think one of the things that as we talked about too, You know, one of the big questions is always critical thinking, or how do we teach people to critical think? And so, you know, as people are listening to this, they're going, wait a minute, so Michael, what you're saying is you're letting the kids run the classroom.

And the answer to that is, well, kind of, but there's a lot of I guess maybe hidden structure to it or what have we, talk to us about kind of how your, you as teachers are working smarter and not harder, which has then led to the quality of teaching improving based upon the results that you're getting.

I think for me personally, it started with a conversation, I think about, it was about 18 months [00:13:00] ago where we were at a staff meeting and um, Alison sort of In some ways, she actually gave us a get out of jail free card to try the things that we, that we wanted to try. I remember when I got into teaching after, you know, a couple of years, I actually felt a little bit stifled by the curriculum in a sense that I was trying to teach to it very strictly.

And the students weren't necessarily always getting those outcomes from it because I, I guess it was, it was quite rigid and I felt like I couldn't move away from it. And it was actually at that moment where our leader came to us as a whole college staff and said, go for it, try something, that it actually kind of flicked that switch.

And then It really started from that moment. The next day going into the classroom and saying, what do the students want to get out of this and having those conversations with them. And it became, it really just became about getting the students together and figuring out what their pathways were, what they wanted to do.

For me, it was simply just that mindset shift.

And I think, you know, we have embraced things like flip learning [00:14:00] and skills based curriculum, but it's really our students that are driving that learning and they're more engaged as a result.

And I think what we often do as educators is we're constantly trying to get kids to take a chance, you know, get out of the rut and take a chance, try something new, try something different. But yet we as educators sometimes are very reluctant to model that. And so I think Alison, by, you know, you saying, Hey, we're gonna give you a get outta jail free card to try something different.

To try something new. and Michael, what your, kind of, your comment on it was that the vision of the project and what we're doing is, is very revolutionary. it's central to what your purpose is as an educator and when you're challenging and, and revolutionizing education system, it's exciting.

It's exciting to be at the forefront of that challenge for your community. and it's something that really invigorates you as an educator

That's absolutely right. And in, we can't predict the future. We don't know what education and the workplace is going to be like in 10, 20 years, and neither do our students. So, why are we [00:15:00] preparing for, you know, the 10 years ago or even the time that we're living in now? Because the landscape will be completely changed.

And I think if we, continue with this rigid model that we've been working from, then we're not setting ourselves and our students up for success. We all need to be learners on this journey. And I think if we're expecting our students to without modelling that for them, then I guess, where do we go from there?

Yeah, what's it look like? And Allison, so you come together for this staff meeting and you tell everybody we're gonna go here and I want you to try this. What's the reaction from the teachers? What's the reaction from the students? What's the reaction from your families within your school?

Because, you know, obviously, one of the things that people are used to seeing is that this is how we do school. And now you're saying, no, no, we're going to change this so that we can make things even better here.

Oh, very much so. I think that, we're actually at a point in time, in, in society where this is. It's more likely to be something that is going to be successful. We [00:16:00] have a whole new generation of parents that are coming through. So for example, at our school, for the first time in our, first year level, so year seven, we have around about 60 to 65 percent of our parents are first time high school parents and majority of them are very young millennial parents as well.

And so that generational change we're noticing is a big driver as well. And they are actually probably our biggest supporters within our parents because they can see the, the education that they felt they should have had and the relevance of that. I know that Michael mentioned about, when he first came into teaching and I guess every teacher, we come into teaching because we enjoy it.

We really want to bring passion into things, but often four or five years in. We're stifled by curriculum, we're getting burnout, you know, we're getting negative interactions with families and things like that that we hadn't really banked on, and we lose the joy. [00:17:00] And that's probably the biggest driver of this is that we have to inspire joy, and we have to bring the joy back to our profession, and we have to bring the joy back into our schools.

And the moment we bring that back, happy teachers, happy students, and happy students learn. That's the difference. And so I guess when you start to first talk about this, there can be a misconception that, oh, well, if you, if you give students a choice, they're not going to choose to do maths. They're not going to choose to do a higher level test.

You know, they're going to want an Xbox in every classroom and slippery slides between the rooms. but that's not, that's not the case. Students actually, what we are finding is that we're actually getting increased stretch and challenge. They are starting to see that they can do something and once they start with that, they are naturally inclined to get to the next level.

that is a key trait that we are seeing with Generation Alpha coming through. They are very much, much more tech savvy than any generation beforehand, so the ability to do flip learning, they watch [00:18:00] YouTube all of the time, so they don't need to come into a classroom and see us being YouTube.

They need to see, hands on skills, what is going to differentiate them from an AI society. What is going to make them still relevant? And so many of our parents see that, but it is a bit tricky because there still is a place for explicit instruction. I've always got to make that clear. We do have explicit instruction.

There's a time for that. And our students do ask for it. But being able to get them over that and knowing that we're a different society now, we're not planning for docile factory workers or, you know, military soldiers anymore. So we don't need to have that. every moment of control within the classroom.

So I guess that's probably the parents. Michael's got a great, I guess he's been working with the students so closely on this, so his input on this would be great.

Yeah, the initial student reaction when coming into the classroom and going, you guys are designing your own learning pathway. They were excited, they were really [00:19:00] excited, but at the same time they're like, What's going on here?

This is very different from other classrooms. are you just a lazy teacher or what's going on here? I guess the moment when I said, come up with a big inquiry question on why you've chosen this subject. And I want you to use ChatGBT or, Copilot, some AI technology to, to help you. they're punching in, some words and they're getting this really long paragraph wordy inquiry question and then they're getting stuck on, okay, what does this now look like?

So. They were very confused with that, but then I guess the point I'm trying to make is that this is a great way to teach students, these competencies on what prompts do I, do I need to put into chat GPT or to get the expected response that I would want. So I think they're the skills. students are wanting to learn and how am I preparing them for the real world?

So the reaction was very, very scared initially, but, they're very comfortable now that they're, they're excited, they're designing their own, their [00:20:00] own way. and they're really enjoying the

process. How have you found their resilience has changed

through that? Yeah, no, resilience has been strong.

So, they're able to go in and, work out, you know, curriculum pathways and, link it to the curriculum and, finding and sorting cognitive verbs, surface deep and transfer. So, reaction has been very

positive. Slides would be nice between classrooms though.

Yeah, yeah, I was thinking that. I mean, if you, if you had the slip and slides and things like that, I mean, this would be, yeah. me ask this question here. In the schools, okay, so we're hearing this and we're kind of, walk us through like maybe what a typical day or I guess what might even be a little easier is maybe the course of a week within your classrooms, how you approach a certain subject because people say, well, okay, the kids are doing this.

What are you doing during this time? And so talk us through like what your role in, in the, learning is during this time.

have to say, the gents will be able to probably step this through quite well, but I do have [00:21:00] to highlight that one of the things that I've found at a leadership level, being able to sort of oversee and step back and observe is that the more meaningful things. that we want to do as teachers. So things such as, individual instruction, differentiated learning based on student and individual needs, all of those things that As teachers in the, I'm going to say previous model for us of teaching, we were very time poor.

And unfortunately, despite the fact that they were important, often fell by the wayside. This model is opening it up that they are actually what comes first and then the curriculum comes second. But we don't seem to have too many issues with getting through the content anyway.

I think one of the things for me is if we're in there building positive relationships with students, We're walking around to each of the groups, each of the students, helping them with their individual focuses through that we're actually building a really solid [00:22:00] rapport with the student, we're getting to know the student really well.

And then, as Alison was saying, the other side of it is the curriculum, and that follows very closely. I think if we're standing in front. delivering content. And again, explicit instruction has its place and it's, it's still relevant, but if that's all we're doing, then we're not having the opportunity to actually build relationships with students and get to know them, which is really the biggest thing that I think they actually want from us in that room.

So if anything, I would actually say the time in the classroom is busier. It's more dynamic. You might have someone walk into the classroom who has a little bit more of a traditional perspective and say, Oh, this is, this seems chaotic, but kids are engaged, students are working, and they know what they're working on and they know what they're working towards.

Michael, what does your planning look like now compared to what you were doing, say this time two years ago?

My planning is very, very easy at the moment because I'm actually doing that as I work with the students [00:23:00] and co constructing the learning. There's clear conceptions of what success And the tasks look like for the students, they're able to, come up with their learning intentions and success criterias.

And normally I would be planning that in advance and, and that would create a lot of work for me.

And I'm guessing too, because this is going on, you mentioned it before, there's a lot more time for collaboration now with, uh, within your school. Talk about maybe how your, your teams are collaborating more because I'm going to guess that, you know, certain grade levels of teachers would, would serve similar students or some, you know, Hey, I teach seventh grade, this, that, and the other thing, how are you all collaborating together as teachers, for student success?

Yeah.

Well, oftentimes we're all actually, we're working towards this process where we're in these agile learning spaces, a space where we might have two to three teachers in there working with. A slightly larger group of students. and in doing so, what we need to do is make sure that we are planning together as a group.

And that started initially those conversations. You [00:24:00] could see them happening at desks in the staff room. Now it's gotten to a point where, I'll walk into the lunch room in the middle of the day during a class time, and there might be a whole department sitting around the table having this really great conversation about.

You know what they're planning for, you know, the next couple of weeks and how that's going to look for the students. And I think I've noticed that shift just even in the last 12 to 18 months. It's

really exciting. And so we've redesigned John around that. so from a leadership perspective, we have from this year rebuilt our timetable to make sure that we've embedded collaborative time.

So there's a few things that often as teachers we, we want to have in a timetable, but taking it back to the staff and actually saying to our entire staff, and I'm, I'm talking everybody from classroom support, teaching staff and grounds and maintenance and front office staff. All the way through being able to have a say on what is actually important here.

If we need this collaborative time, if working [00:25:00] together is potentially going to increase the quality of learning that's happening in our classrooms, and if we can spread that workload so that three teachers might be planning across a week. Instead of every teacher planning five lessons for that, for that one week of school, there's, you know, three teachers who plan a lesson each that that spreads the load a lot more.

And so we found that that was a priority. So we, we built the structures, we've changed our processes. So our staff meetings look very different, we've changed the way that we actually conduct our, our day. Everything has started to form around being able to allow this to happen, because That was the very first question that we had was, what are the barriers that could stand in our way to this?

And we kept, we keep asking that question. Is there a new barrier that's presenting itself from us doing this? And then we work, we change the system to get rid of the barrier.

And, and I think [00:26:00] that's incredible right there. And I'm gonna guess that, you're bringing this up to your teachers for the first time and if a teacher's done something a certain way for multiple years, sometimes there's a little bit of resistance to change. so I guess something that you just brought up a minute ago, how do you get your buy-in if your teachers, but then tell us what your PD looks like.

What do your faculty meetings look like now as opposed to maybe what they look like two years ago?

Oh, definitely. I would say that, it can often be mistaken as resistance to change, but I would say there's often usually hesitation due to fear. And, as teachers, we're often in an environment where we're very much used to ticks and crosses, things are either right or they're not. And so we're very concerned if we don't get it right, because we've got a lot of the high stakes things that as, educators, if we get them wrong, that, you know, there's, there's a lot that can go wrong.

so that can be scary in itself. But we have good and bad lessons and just because you try something new and it fell flat doesn't mean that that, you know, didn't, didn't have [00:27:00] some learning in it or some sort of value because you can plan a lesson for six, seven days and it still falls flat. So we're really in a no lose situation with this.

And, it was for many, a lot of things, I guess it was still Simon Sinek's way of, you know, you have to explain the why, why are we doing this? And we had to address a lot of those unwritten or unquestioned rules. So who says that we have to do every last bit of the curriculum? Where is that written?

who says that we have to have desks all in rows? Where is that written? Why is that the best way to control student behavior? You know, there's all of these sorts of things that over the years have become almost unquestioned and unwritten rules. And so we had to start talking about why. Our teachers knew they were tired.

And they just sort of felt that if they were better organised, or they worked harder, or that they did something, or if they were just given more time, that's often the [00:28:00] thing that we hear. If we could just get more time, but there's still the same amount of time in the day. It's how well you use the time.

So that's what we had to start looking at.

Yeah, that's absolutely right. I think, taking back to what Alison said about even those tough lessons, I think one of the things that I, I'm really passionate about is, learning something new every day and learning, learning new things from challenges and, you know, a tough lesson is actually for the students that's a human up there in front of them taking a chance.

And again, it's about modeling, modeling that learning for the students. And we need to use that fear as a motivator for us. not a barrier to stop us, to slow us down.

Yeah. The important thing as well to Michael is that it's to get out of your comfort zone, get out of your comfort zone and try something new.

I think that's really, really important here. The college is to try and support teachers that, are so used to standing in front of the classroom and delivering a lesson plan and, and then not being able to adapt [00:29:00] or change that. So I think just working with the students, developing that learning is really important.

And I think you just got to embrace that here at the college.

And it's that, that embracing that becomes important because if you lean into the fear, you're only going to fail forward. And that, that's the way that we want to keep going with these sorts of things. So that's where our PD now does start to look a little bit different around the college because a lot of what we're trying to do doesn't exist.

And there's no experts that we can really bring in. We try our best. We, we go and look worldwide for, for what we can. And we take, I guess, more inspiration rather than professional development with that. Now, our version of professional development is more to take inspiration and to take our own questions and expertise.

And then we actually use the collective knowledge and experience from our staff. So they. Our learning and teaching team, which both Michaels are a part of only just recently ran our most, one of [00:30:00] our evening professional development sessions. And they were able to run that and our staff were able to get more out of that.

And it's not just sitting there like a class or a staff meeting because the students don't want to learn that way. Adults don't want to learn that way. So we're trying to make sure that we are always putting something relevant in front of teachers. But more giving them the space and the time to actually go do something with it because if you just simply talk at them, they'll just go back to their classroom and keep doing what they've always been doing, because that's what we know.

That's what's safe. And so when you're encouraging them to try something different, to actually walk right beside them and be their companion on this journey, which is fundamental to our faith as a Catholic school, is where we're headed. And that's what we want to do along the way and we're finding that that is working.

yeah, and I think with anything new, I always tell people, I said, the change isn't the hard part. It's the transition to get there. [00:31:00] That's the challenging piece of things because you do have to step outside that comfort zone. You do have to try something new, and when, but when you model it, it makes your students more likely to want to do that as well.

So now let's ask this question because the, the 100, 000 question here is. This is all great. What are the results that you're seeing? Talk to us about that, because I know you're seeing some really great things come out of this just in the short time you've been doing it.

We certainly are, student engagement would have to be the biggest one so far. We don't have the entire school quite at where, Michael Parker is at this point in time. So he, he's certainly leading the charge with a number of teachers and moving this into our core classes, which are at, in Australia, things like science, maths, , English and, history.

So moving into those classes within the next sort of six months. Which will be great, but we have already seen in a very short amount of time with teachers doing this across our college, the actual engagement of students is massive. [00:32:00] So, in Australia, particularly post COVID, we've had, issues with student attendance, so post lockdowns, things like that, with students not returning to school.

Or, I guess, it would be more better described as students and perhaps their families not seeing the value of school now that they've experienced school online. And That, that begs the question that we've asked a number of times. What have students done today that they couldn't have done online?

And if your class is still resembling that, where they could have simply listened to you on a video and got the same result, then we're not getting anywhere. So we're now offering students experiences they wouldn't have got if they didn't come to school. And they're engaging with that. They're showing up each day and they're showing up happier.

some students will always struggle, some students who perhaps are used to quite rigid routine. However, we've got routine embedded in that. It's just a matter of a bit of, a bit of a shift. So we've, we've had a significant increase there. And also [00:33:00] within our academic results. So particularly in the senior school, this is something we've been working through quite a lot.

We have 100 percent of our graduates who go straight into full time work or study. And so that's going, in Australia, moving straight into university. Or straight into a full time job, and that's something that the state average for us in Queensland is just over 10 percent of students that don't do that.

And for our area, which is the Logan Beaudesert area, it's an average, on average, it's 18. 9 percent of students don't go on to full time study or a full time employment. So for us to have zero, we've got everybody where they need to be, just within the year of this change is a big difference. Yeah, I

think the exciting thing is we actually don't know where this is going to go.

We're very new in this approach and the results are still evolving. We're still coming into each class with new challenges and surprises from students. So, [00:34:00] I think it's really important that the The learning environments and the pedagogical practices and leveraging digital technologies is really supporting the deep learning happening in the classroom.

And I, I'd sort of echo that same sentiment that both Alison and Michael were saying with the teachers as well. That return of joy, that collegiality, collective teacher efficacy, like I was saying before, seeing student, uh, seeing teachers in the staff room, working together in groups, being joy, joyous about what they're doing, about the work they're doing with the students and leaning into that fear.

Because that's really exciting. And doing it together. Doing it together.

Yeah, and I can imagine what that looks like in terms of when you're doing it together to walk in and see teachers that are, Hey, let's do this. When you see that, that's contagious. That's contagious. And I'm going to guess those people, maybe that are a little more resistant, kind of go, I want that. I want to be part of that, too.

And I'm going to get on board with what this, with what's going on here. So let's ask this question and, Michael, I know you just kind of touched on it [00:35:00] here and saying we're not really sure, but let's ask the question of what are the future plans? What are the future, where do you see this going in the next three to five years for your school?

What does this look like in three to five years?

Yeah, well, that's, that's interesting because we actually don't know. I think just rolling it out with the elective subjects initially is the main thing at the moment is, is making sure that, we're doing this together, but, doing it when everybody's ready as well. So evolving that through the school community and, and hopefully rolling that out across, across the college.

, so I think that's. It's really exciting the next few years, definitely. I see it that we will have, our school will evolve from looking like the typical school. I mean in most schools you can go in and schools haven't really changed since the 1900s. They're very similar. You go into a hospital, it looks very different today than what it did in the 1900s, and the same thing with most, most businesses.

But you can walk into [00:36:00] schools and we still have rows of desks and chairs and students doing as they're told. It's very easy to tell it's a school. And I, I think over the next three to five years, I think that's what's going to change and I think that's what has to change. I think that we as a school, from a student perspective, are going to more resemble a dynamic workplace.

where students are working on different things at different times, knowing well and truly what they are supposed to achieve, what success looks like. And that is truly, I know that it's been bantered about for over a decade now, about developing assessment capable learners. So students who understand why they're doing this.

And what relevance this has to their future. And we're starting to see less of those questions coming in of, well, when am I ever going to use this? Well, we're making that very clear to you. where do you want to go with this? Where do you want to take it? Knowing [00:37:00] that everything doesn't have to revolve around student interest.

And students are very quick to not always choose their interest once you start moving on this. That's been a key learning for us. We thought that students would just stay within their lane and just what they wanted. But it's been very different, John, in our experience. Students are very willing to be able to move outside of that and it only takes a small amount of encouragement.

I suppose briefly, if I could just add to that, I would ask the question, if we are not continually evolving in the next three to five years, what does that look like? What is the world going to look like in three to five years? If we continue to stagnate and stay where we're at, I think there's a lot more fear, you know, that gives me a lot more anxiety thinking about that scenario than the one we're moving into, which is energising.

I think that's exciting right there. Let me ask this one last question for Michael and Michael. You have a teacher out there that's listening to this, or a principal out there that's listening to this, and they're going, Wow, that sounds really great, but I don't know, I don't, what would you say to [00:38:00] them, what would be the pep talk you would give them in a minute just to kind of say, You can do this, this is, this is worth the, the payoff on this one.

Yeah,

100%. I think it's all about getting out of your comfort zone and giving it a go. You've got nothing to lose. Working with the students to develop the learning pathway, I think is the way of the future. I believe it's the new norm in education.

I would frame it as one of those radio ads.

Are you sick and tired of having the same thing day in and day out? Because our students are, and our teachers are, and I guess what I was like building on what I was saying before, that's, we don't know where the future is headed and we can't predict the future, but if we do not adapt in any way to.

Where the future could be headed and the skills necessary for that, for both our students, our teachers, our school leaders, it's a little bit worrying if we don't adapt.

Well, I want to say a big thank you to Allison, Michael, and Michael for joining us today. I think what you've got going at your school is absolutely amazing. I hope that our [00:39:00] listeners enjoy this and I hope that this inspires you to maybe take a different approach of what you're doing at your school and stop repeating the same thing over and over and over again.

Get out of your comfort zone, try a little something new. Allison, Michael, Michael, thank you so much for being on today.

Thanks, John, for having us. We really appreciate it. Thanks, John.

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