Future Schools 2018 Day 2

Report on Future School 2018 Day 2


Peter Corkill
Best practice in Science

Peter is the Principal at John Monash Science School and outlined some strategies he uses in his online lesson environment. Many students study units of work such as Climate Science (a blend of Chemistry, Physics and Maths), Neuroscience, Biotechnology online during their usual school day and commented about how much they loved the courses.




The next few sessions from Elizabeth Lonergan and Philip Riley focused on some stark stats about teacher and Principal well-being. Only 44% make it past 5 years in the profession, teachers have the highest rate for mental illness claims



The Principal of Vasse Primary School in Busselton, Sinan Kerimofski, shared his vision for engaging students

People
Places
Pedagogy

He focused on the second aspect and the ways he is creating great learning spaces in his school. They have been deliberate in categorising the spaces:

• Caves - working alone
• Waterholes -small group work, sharing ideas
• Campfires - big groups, whole class
• Mountaintops - display, performance

I was impressed by the strategic approach to classroom design and the way the staff taught students how to use each of the different spaces. He also modeled these ideas for staff and created a great staff room.


Game design was the subject of an entertaining and energetic presentation from Bill Cohen. Bill made the case that game design is a great way to engage kids in collaborative learning (play the game and make a suggestion about how to improve it), creativity (come up with a game like snakes and ladders, play it, then make one change) and critical thinking.

The games he started with were really basic but what a great idea a game club is!

He shared his belief that assessment is like a game - a challenge with a quantifiable outcome, often eliciting an emotional response

Categories of games - Live games - bullrush, zombie run, Geoguessr, Escape rooms

Storytelling games - a quiet year, Lady Blackbird

Preparing students for the "new work order" was a standout session by Rob Steffler and connected strongly to my work in "Creative Industries" at my school.

His prompts were direct and challenging - as leaders are we disrupting? Are we failing in that - we should be or we are not doing it well enough!

Rob shared his work in The Delorean Project, a project-based, entrepreneurial project that he runs with Year 10 students. They work on their projects for a full day of the week. The projects are all real-life, real-world and students get to pitch their ideas (live on Facebook) for real money to real investors.



He shared his learning from the project - particularly about assessment and reporting. Initially they did not grade or report on the project but begun to when engagement was lower than usual - reporting gave some legitimacy and was a good idea - but engagement stayed the same.


I think this tweet sums up me learning. The main ideas I got was about change - not for change sake but because what we are delivering for kids in our school structures now is not what is needed for their futures. If school is anything it is about preparing students to take their place in the world and the ideas and principles shared here give great direction for must needed high-bar rethinking of school.