Heard on the Hill Term 1, Week 6
From the Principal
Bonjour à tous, and Wanju
I hope everyone had the opportunity to escape across the long week end; physically or at least mentally. I got to do both but the bit I enjoyed the most was sitting on my balcony playing backgammon. The long weekend just gone comes a great time of the term right at week 5. As a teacher you must remember that you are never more than 5 weeks away from last holidays or your next ones. A break is certainly a good panacea for our stressful job.
Making a change to your daily life can also be beneficial, here are a couple of changes that I heard on the radio the other day
- Compliment someone at least once a day
- Turn off your Social Media and reconnect with people
- Learning something new
- Forgive yourself
I forgot to mention last week that I attended the ECU graduation ceremony as a guest of ECU. I would like to publically congratulate Lindsay Rae who crossed the stage and received his academic certificate. On recognising staff, last week, Tina Nottle was recognised by the Department of Education with a Making a Difference award. Please join with me in congratulating these people when you see them.
One week into the WA Omicron wave case numbers are climbing and we should expect that here too. The leadership team have been busy ensure we have enough contingencies for all the possible eventualities. Though we have no crystal ball fortune favours the prepared. Our biggest concern at the moment is staffing if the wave hits quickly – a little like Transperth at the moment. A draft staffing contingency is described below.
En Avant
Staffing Contingency
There are many variables that effect COVID workforce planning, however the guiding factors will be student attendance and staff absence.
With most gridlines having 40 – 45 classes, predicting area of need is impossible.
Priority will be ensuring teachers are in front of classes with qualified and specialist teachers where possible.
STUDENT ATTENDANCE LAST WEEK
If absences climb, collapsing classes may become an option, (which would free up staff for relief if needed). We should prioritize our ATAR curriculum continuity by putting the best person in front of an ATAR class.
|
Year Level |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
|
7 |
41 |
31 |
27 |
22 |
35 |
|
8 |
42 |
39 |
28 |
27 |
30 |
|
9 |
40 |
33 |
34 |
31 |
30 |
|
10 |
47 |
45 |
46 |
37 |
43 |
|
11 |
49 |
44 |
47 |
32 |
36 |
|
12 |
23 |
26 |
28 |
26 |
26 |
|
TOTAL |
242 |
218 |
210 |
175 |
200 |
STAFF ABSENCE
Currently, 2FTE of TR is built into the staffing of the school. All staff could be called upon to do relief. Executive staff, PCs, teaching staff with non-contact roles, etc.
LEARNING AREAS
PC's have developed a workforce contingency plan for their LA with a best fit model for ATAR/specialist classes. This includes a 2IC should the PC be absent.
STUDENT SERVICES AND ADMINISTRATION
In a high case load environment and smaller student numbers we will manage operations with a smaller team of staff.
SUPPORT STAFF
Assess on an as needs basis. Assess the priority (in a high case load environment) and replace where needed most and where possible. Again there is likely to be no like for like replacement.
I hope that this gives you an idea of our plans, at this point.
Nuts and Bolts
COVID BOOSTERS
A reminder that all staff need to check the COVID calculator for when their booster is due. Staff need to get their booster within a month of their due date and upload their proof of vaccination to HRMIS.
To avoid a stop of pay, you must upload your booster proof of vaccination to HRMIS as soon as you have had your booster.
REMOTE LEARNING PLAN
(The date on the document is wrong but all the data is correct)
Skills for Lifelong Learning - Enterprise Skills
Personal and Social Capability
In the Western Australian Curriculum, students develop personal and social capability as they learn to understand themselves and others, and manage their relationships, lives, work and learning more effectively.
The capability involves students in a range of practices including recognising and regulating emotions, developing empathy for others and understanding relationships, establishing and building positive relationships, making responsible decisions, working effectively in teams, handling challenging situations constructively and developing leadership skills.
The Personal and Social capability learning continuum is organised into four interrelated elements.
Self-awareness
This element involves students in identifying and describing the factors that influence their emotional responses.
Students:
- recognise emotions
- recognise personal qualities and achievements
- understand themselves as learners
- develop reflective practice
Self-management
This element involves students in effectively regulating, managing and monitoring their own emotional responses, and persisting in completing tasks and overcoming obstacles.
Students:
- express emotions appropriately
- develop self-discipline and set goals
- work independently and show initiative
- become confident, resilient and adaptable
Social awareness
This element involves students recognising others’ feelings and knowing how and when to assist others.
Students:
- appreciate diverse perspectives
- contribute to civil society
- understand relationships
Social management
This element involves students in interacting effectively and respectfully with a range of adults and peers.
Students:
- communicate effectively
- work collaboratively
- make decisions
- negotiate and resolve conflict
- develop leadership skills
Strategies that support this capability are:
- Project-based learning
- Cooperative learning activities
- Tasks that provide opportunities to collaborate, problem-solve and push their higher order thinking skills
- Reflection and Evaluation during and at the completion of tasks - individually and as a team
- Dedicated social and emotional learning programs
- Getting involved in clubs and leadership roles within the school
- Being in a diverse school community, where they get to meet students from many different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds
Learning Environment
Signalling the type of response you want from students is the next skill we will be exploring.Call outs can cause a lot of disruption and often end up ruining class discussions. They often reduce accountability to zero, but they often tend to be the default response.
To prevent call outs occurring, the teacher just needs to clearly state how they want the students to respond prior to asking questions.
Oral responses are:
1. Put up your hand
2. Don’t put up your hand, I’ll ask someone to respond
3. Invite call-outs (whole class brainstorming)
4. Choral response – whole class responds together
5. Tell your neighbour
The teacher can also ask students to write their responses down as an alternative to an oral response.
Some teachers use popsticks with students’ names on them, to create randomness with regards to who gets called upon, or you can even get apps that do the same thing.
School Board Staff Rep needed
Looking for a leadership opportunity? Contact Kelly and get involved in the BSHS School Board.
The School Board is the governing body of the school. It supports school improvement and provides input into future directions. Staff representation is an important part of this process, so please consider taking up this role.
Nominations to Kelly by COB Wednesday 9 March, please. Kelly.Anderson@education.wa.edu.au
Workload Advisory Committee
Calling for any submissions for workload issues - here is the link again.
We also need some new staff representatives, so please indicate your interest in being on this committee. It generally only meets once a term for approximately an hour.
Nominations to Kelly by COB Friday 11 March, please. Kelly.Anderson@education.wa.edu.au
Concept Attainment
We want our students to go beyond the remembering of facts or rote learnt skills to one where they see patterns or concepts. Students need opportunities to generalise, summarise, and draw conclusions by looking at their learning at a big picture level at times. As teachers, we just need to reflect on the unit of work being covered or the objectives from the course outline and see where these are taking the students. These three questions can assist us in ensuring there is meaning behind what we do:
- From the facts or skills being taught, which concepts are at the heart of the learning?
- Which connections between concepts would we like students to make as a result of the learning?
- What opportunities for application and transfer can we design to help students take their learning further?
The last question is about looking for opportunities to make learning more worthwhile; put into practice what is learnt. If we think about past PL activities where we have learnt something. Unless we regularly put the PL into practice it may become irrelevant. Graphic organisers are a great tool to guide students to develop a better understanding of concepts or big picture ideas.
Finance Committee Nominations
Bunbury SHS Finance Committee is calling for nominations for membership. We have four staff member vacancies to fill.
The finance committee assists the principal to exercise their governance responsibility in the management of the school’s financial resources.
We have three positions whose tenure ceases at the end of this term. The Committee wished to thank Liz Chambers, David Waddell and Mark Woodland for their commitment over the past two years.
Tenure on the Finance Committee is 2 years. Meetings are held twice per term. Monday at 3pm - Weeks 4 & 8. Special meetings may be called when necessary. Meetings are held in the Boardroom.
Complete the nomination form below if you wish to nominate for a position on the Finance Committee. Retiring members can renominate. In the event that we have more nominations than positions available, the Committee will vote to elect members.
Finance Committee Nomination Form closing 4pm Friday 11 March.
Noongar News from our AIEO
Professional Learning – Aboriginal Cultural Standards Framework workshop 28 January 2022
Firstly I’d like to thank all staff for being extremely positive and respectful during the presentation of our workshop on Friday 28 January 2022.
We received some great ideas and we are now adding them to our Action Plan for the school. With the constraints and limited resources we currently have due to Covid, we have taken three possible indicators from this workshop that our staff see as important to implement here at our school and meet the Cultural Standards. We will continue to add to our Plan over the coming years.
Our most popular indicator was to develop a Yarning Circle. This would meet two of our Standards in the Framework; Relationships and Learning Environment. Thanks to Paul Reynolds for kick starting this idea already.
The second indicator was developing an Aboriginal Advisory Council for the school which I have already started the process for. This will meet two of the Standards; Leadership and Relationships.
Lastly, a central resource for culturally appropriate material and improved learning environment. The school to have access to resourcing that will enhance the teaching of Aboriginal students and allow our non-Indigenous students to learn and embrace Aboriginal culture and history. This will meet three of the Standards; Resources, Teaching and Relationships.
I have included the link to the current Aboriginal Cultural Standards Framework for your information. Please take a look and develop an understanding of what our Department is trying to achieve when it comes to educating our Aboriginal community in a school environment.
Thank you
Kristy
Library News
We have recently added a vibrant range of new books to our collection, with themes to suit everyone from reluctant to avid readers.
A few non-fiction titles we recently purchased that might be of interest to teachers are:
The School, by Brendan James Murray; "an astonishingly vivid portrait of a single school year. Hilarious, heartfelt and true”;
Take risks; by highly respected author and educator John Marsden, is a compelling memoir and forthright discussion on teaching, parenting and society as a whole. John has put his theories to the test and seen the empowering results of his methods.
And to make you laugh and cry, Love Stories, by bestselling author and one of Australia’s finest journalists, Trent Dalton, who walked through the streets of Brisbane asking people one simple question “Can you please tell me a love story?” The result is an immensely warm, poignant, funny and moving book about love in all its guises.
All staff are welcome to borrow from the library.
Happy reading!
BUNBURY SHS INSTAGRAM
BUNBURY SHS FACEBOOK
Something interesting happening in or around your classroom? Having an incursion or excursion this term? Please let me know!
We love to share updates from the school with our community and would like representation from each area of our wonderful school; no matter how big or small.
Please submit stories for our Facebook page via the wufoo link below and include as much information as you can, plus a few images to accompany the article. If you are having trouble with the wufoo form, you can email the information to me directly.(ellie.mackay@education.wa.edu.au)
Don't forget to follow us on Facebook and check out what our students and staff get up to.
What’s OnTerm 1, Week 6
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Mike's Calendar
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