HCC4 Heliograph

A smiling burst of face and beard. A year 12 student approaches me afterward with a proffered hand and a ‘Thank you! We’ve got our ‘shhhhhhhh’ back in the song, where it belongs, for at least six years.

It seems I had inadvertently resurrected a phantom, recently all but eradicated.  The Facebook page for the alumni suggests otherwise.  The human need for affiliation is strong, and the things which provide us with a symbol of a connectedness, loom large in the group psyche.

I had been asked to deliver the ‘Charge to the Prefects’ at Merewether High School, academically selective, and the top performing high school in the region. As a self confessed internet tragic, I thought I’d tap the combined thought of so many ‘tweeps’ out there in the Twitter world.  On the evening before, I tweeted

Speaking to Student Leaders at their induction tomorrow. Things you think I should say? #prefectinduction 8:43 PM Feb 18th from web

It was wonderful to receive so many ideas from others.  I’ve pasted below my speaking notes and added a line here and there.  As an introduction, I referred to the way the prefects had been introduced and how, as they had stood, the very stark height difference between the first two tall guys introduced contrasted with the petite frame of the girl introduced next. It was visible and brought an audible response from the hall full of people.

It drew me to draw a link with the choir who had sung.  The voices: different, pitches combining in harmony, providing a clue as to the way that we can juxtapose difference to produce something so much more powerful and moving. That is our challenge as human beings, but a challenge we are capable of answering.

I wanted to tell the audience about Twitter.  (I heard afterward, from the child of a colleague, that I looked ‘too old to be on Twitter,’ but reminded him that I had also spoken about seeing the world from the ‘inside out’ and that, in here, sometimes I only feel about 15!)

So, I said that I was…

Planning, thinking Twitter

• Last night, watching show about music, I tweeted:
• Speaking at Prefect induction..what should I say?

Someone suggested I sing a song..

• I sang Father and Son for staff here at Merewether at the start of the year.  Intergenerational communication .
• there are certainly many recurrent themes

Another person suggested that I listen to the Stone Roses, and realise every generation thinks the one B4 is square.

• We all see the world from inside out.
• No one else can ever see it quite the way that we see it, and yes that can be frustrating.
• Be proud of being chosen as a leader in a leading school.

Just talk about #newykidif. You know you grew up in Newcastle if: ( a hash tag running on Twitter encouraging Newcastle people to think of the icons of their childhood.)

• The rich folk history of our town & how their “present” will one day be folk history & memories
• You know you went to Merewether if :

• The rich traditions of a school like Merewether.
• The alumni Facebook page –
• the sound in the song,
• the jibes of others
• the sense of connectedness

That their actions, mistakes & successes will shape the future, just as ours have done ~ but their tools may be different

• It is only Year 11 and 12 who had a twentieth century school experience.  Year 10 started Kindergarten in the year 2000.  You are the leaders of what could be a new time for us.
• As well as being learners, I hope that you will also be teachers of new ideas, new approaches, of solutions which don’t yet exist.  You can do it
• There is much to do.  You have much to offer.  As leaders, never be fearful of taking a position.  Not everyone may agree, but at least people know what you stand for and can choose to follow.
• The internet world offers us an opportunity to move beyond religion and culture into an international community where we can ask the big questions: ‘What do we need to all agree on if we want to sustain and add quality to humanity?’  These are big questions, but you have the ability to be part of the answer.

‘Dare to Know’ – Immanuel Kant.

• Never cease being curious..  not so much ‘dare to know’, as ‘dare to always want to know’
• The school motto talks about knowledge and hard work.  Scientia ac Labore
• There is also the need to be aware of the ability of all of us to construct new knowledge and to progress to better understanding.

Talk about service leadership – Lech Walesa. (former Polish Pres)

• Leaders have a trusted position to make decisions and take positions which are for the benefit of all: a service

the difference between Dejure and Defacto leadership

• That is, there are some parts of the role which are due to the position, and the principles and rules related to the role.
• There is then the practice of the role: the way you ‘walk the talk’
• There can be a balancing act to perform in working between these two roles

Trust and respect helps the leader walk the tightrope.

“Respect is something which is earned”

ask: how did you learn 2 walk? how many times did u trip/fall? Life’s like that!! U need 2 get back up &try again &again

• Resilience
• Optimism
• Pride.  Be proud of yourself as we are of you

• Best wishes and good luck. Have a wonderful year

Thanks to lots of good colleagues who provided the ‘tweets’ which form the basis for this post.

Things are off to a great start at Carrington Public School this year with enrolments up by around 20 from 2009.  This means the school will now have 4 classes and the enthusiastic staff team is looking forward to another great year.  The Aboriginal enrolment now stands at around 45%

Kindergarten will again be visible on the internet as Miss Asquith blogs and keeps parents and the community informed about what happens. Elsewhere in the school, classes regularly use their Connected Classroom to share lessons and other activities with a wide range of schools and have also devloped their own ‘virtual excursions’ as well as posting excellent improvement rates in core skill areas.

Today, when I dropped in, the whole school was getting ready to head off for swimming with the younger children enroute to a nearby indoor pool and the older children off to their weekly Nippers which is run in conjunction with the Cooks Hill Surf Club.

The atmosphere around the school at Carrington is a wonderful example of mutual respect.  In the last year or so, the number of reported inappropriate incidents have plummeted in an attitudinal environment which one of the staff described as a place where simply: “We like the kids, and they like us.”

It shows.

You can almost hear the clank of engines and the hum of haulage in the bush at the back of West Wallsend.

The history is nowhere starker that in the streetscenes which borrow from a time of bustling thirst quenching and the coming and going of people from Wallsend and ‘Young Wallsend, or up Cockle Creek after a lake crossing.

The Museum Hotel still serves beers to a new generation of ute driving locals and looks out across the hollow to the slopes of Mount Sugarloaf.

Up the hill, the Clyde has shut its doors and the row of shops where the Co-Op ran for many years, is now looking a little down at heel as it disappears down the hill toward the school.

The corner Pharmacy still stands proudly on one corner ready to dispense, while across the road the liquor store is also standing ready for business.  There is a quiet sense of a connection with generations of past families in this part of the world, which ambles on, with scant regard for the outward signs of the passage of time..

The history is all gathered together up at the High School in the excellent local museum, and is nowhere more stark than in the ‘Infants’ building at the former West Wallsend Central School, now West Wallsend Public.

Nowadays, the F3 roars past, but, inside the schools in the area, there’s a quiet and effective alignment taking place.

With great commitment from all Principals and their leadership teams, the schools in the ‘Sugarloaf Links’ local management group have been building an attitudinal environment for the future.

With a statement of values centred around a key word, and acronym: STRIVE,  the schools have built a common value framework.  Sure, there is still work to do, but the past few years have seen shared executive meetings, combined school developoment days and an innovative K-2 parent seminar in addition to the sharing of human resources like the community liaison officers and other staff.

Spaces like the MySchool website don’t tell the full story for these schools, who are constantly looking for ways to build on the key view that every child and young person can be encouraged and supported to be their own very personal best, and that opportunities can be sought beyond the here and now.

West Wallsend High has shown great improvement for Year 9 and has started to steadily grow its numbers.  Children and parents from nearby schools become familiar with the attitudinal environment which their primary children will face at High School by being consistently part of it from Kindergarten.

An annual Business Breakfast, presented by students and staff at the High School and fully supported by leaders from all partner primary schools, has steadily built links with business in the immediate area, which is set to expand as light industry moves in and the potential for further development grows as part of the Hunter Development Corporation strategies for the area.

Just down the road, at one of the partner primaries, Edgeworth Heights, earthmovers are building a new landscape.

New suburbs begin to roll out across the hillside with new homes springing up almost as fast as the humidity hot-housed hybrid buffalo grass can grow on the nature strips of a new style of resident.

The new homes have also delivered an upturn in Kindergarten enrolments across the road at the school where a whole range of exciting programs happen and a staff committed to ‘giving it a really good go!’ do exactly that, with strong results as shown in school data.

Innovative programs in visual literacy have complemented a great atmosphere around the school.

Down the road and it is great to see the staff at Barnsley back in their staffroom and administration block.  A little over a year ago, they were scratching around, during the heat of their January vacation,  in the stink and ash of their block which had so senselessly been detroyed by fire.  As usual, everybody simply got on with the job, and the school posted good growth figures between Year 3 and 5. It was wonderful to see the admin staff in an expanded office, very small return for a year of temporary facilities and the willingness to keep going when it would have been easy to pack it in.

Not surprising that, during a visit to nearby Wakefield School, which provides an excellent learning environment for some of our students with the most challenging behaviours, Rueben the Rooster, one of the schools ‘chooks’ summed it all up.  These schools and the people in them really are

something to crow about

–

Members of the Millibah Dance Group at Hunter School of the Performing Arts

Millibah Dancers - HSPA

show off their talents to celebrate the end of a Creative Arts Program run at the school throughout the year for Aboriginal students from schools throughout 9 of the 10 School Education Groups within the region.

CAAEP (Creative Arts Aboriginal Education Program) students on stage

Students involved in the program developed movement and music pieces as well as artwork and design.  The end result was a celebration in the magnificent 380 seat Hunter Theatre, with students showing off their work in a number of presentations.

A great aspect of the Millibah performance was the students’ self introductions: saying their name and their country of origin. There was a great range of Aboriginal countries identified from across the east coast of the continent we now call Australia.

A number of non-Aboriginal students are also members of the dance group and clearly spoke about the fun and learning they have had by being members of the group.

The school also runs a great program to provide access for boys to a range of performing arts opportunities, with everything from drumming to improvisation and movement.

Moodle, Sharepoint, Millenium, Mathletics…  here is a school with staff who will give anything a really good go to make a difference for students.

A great winning program for the school this year has been the Stingers Cheerleading squad, who took out the State titles and then placed 4th at the Asia Pacific Finals in Brisbane.

Francis Greenway is looking forward to some good outcomes from building work around the school: both physically and in the staff and students.

Every man and his dog knows the way to Millers Forest Public School

Just past the roundabout on the road to Raymond Terrace is the turn off for Millers Forest Public School. The school’s enrolment is now up over forty, with two classes serving the needs of a range of students whose parents have responded to their view of the benefits of a much smaller school setting.

Millers Forest works hard to make sure that children have access to a range of opportunities: from choir and music to interaction with a number of other smaller schools and participation in other programs and projects.

The school has a beautiful outlook across the river flats, yet suffers from the

Looking North from Millers Forest

openess and exposure to cold westerlies on some days.

This picture shows the view looking Northward from outside the main classroom.  Near the school fence a vegetable garden shows off the produce of the shared work and, in the distance, horses graze in the paddocks.

Only a half hour or so out of Newcastle, but a very different environment and place of learning.

Beresfield Public School

Thornton and Beresfield Public Schools are only separated by a few kilometres, and are finding new ways to move closer to one another through sharing of their approaches to participation in the National Partnerships program in Numeracy.

Both schools have seen a change in leadership in the last year and the planning process for National Partnerships has created great opportunities for dialogue about the things which can really make a difference for children.

New office foyer area at Thornton

This has meant a lot of work, yet a great sense of commitment from staff and interesting and exciting times ahead.

Thornton will probably continue to be a growing school due to the new housing developments nearby.  It was good to have the opportunity to spend time speaking with all staff recently about the evolution of education and some of the ideas which drive our imperatives around creation of optimal learning environments for children.

The 12 months ahead will certainly be busy but, with some resources and hopefully some engagement with some digital learning environments and quality teaching, there should be some great outcomes.

Hunter River Community School continues to look for a variety of ways to empower their students to take ownership of their communication and to have access to a broad range of suitable experiences.

Barney in the foyer

Barney the Dairy Corporation cow greets visitors,  promoting healthy dietary habits and providing a space for artistic expression and tactile experiences.

The school is finding excellent uses for interactive touch screens, which integrate well with Boardmaker and other software to facilitate students engaging with scanned reading resources and to present assemblies and pretty much anything else the staff can think of.  A great way to work from what has been available and then expand options by tapping into the potential of enhanced technologies.

And, to assist in presenting content to students with autism, the school is using the ZAC browser.

Hunter River Community School is the top school in HCC4, literally: located in East Maitland, just near Maitland High School.

A playground boat pushes off with imagination intact

Under a shade sail, a small girl relaxes in the stern of a landbound boat: book in hand, enjoying lunchtime at the Junction

A sea of red hats blossom around the playground and under the new Covered Outdoor Learning Area.  This is an iconic school in Newcastle. The Junction: where it all comes together.

The Junction continues to evolve and 2010 looks like being a great year.

The Junction is set for some major building works as a result of the Building the Education Revolution and will see a hall added to its other facilities.  A walk around the grounds sees a

The Junction: where it all comes together

combination of heritage buildings, newer buildings erected following the Newcastle earthquake, and a range of demountable and MDR classrooms.

This year, The Junction has become home to the very popular and growing Olive Tree Markets which see the playground full of stalls and people on the first Saturday of every month.  As people move around the grounds, they will probably also notice the ‘backyard’ project, where children can see first hand the possibilities for growing various vegetables and other plants in a space similar to the average back yard.

Community Assembly at Newcastle East

The week begins at Newcastle East Public School with a ‘community assembly’ to recognise good achievements and make announcements which are relevant for the whole school.

Award winners proudly receive their awards in the school’s Covered Outdoor Learning Area before heading off to their classes for some more learning, at the oldest continuously operating school in Australia.

Newcastle East has recently named its new staffroom building in honour of the first headmaster at the school, a Mr Wrensford.

The school will be complemented next year with a new classroom building, courtesy of the Building Education Revolution.

Heritage buildings at Newcastle East

The site will then echo both a proud past and an exciting future, as the heritage buildings stand proudly on Newcastle’s Hill.

The Newcastle East Public School recently held a very successful Colonial Fair, raising a significant amount of money which will be used to supplement resources at the school.

During the visit I was able to spend time showing some of the features of the school’s new Moodle site which will hopefully become more and more of a dynamic learning environment.