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La Trobe University ’ s Nexus teaching program celebrates its first graduates .
Jo Lampert interviewed by Wade Zaglas
In an exciting development for the teaching profession , La Trobe University ’ s unique Nexus program has recently produced its first group of classroom-ready secondary school teachers . In their first year , students work part-time in schools and receive direct mentoring opportunities and professional development . Second year Nexus participants become full-time paraprofessionals in their schools , with a 0.8 teaching load and even their own class while they study . To talk about this handson teaching program , Campus Review spoke with Nexus director Professor Jo Lampert .
Lampert says the program ’ s Master of Teaching ( Secondary ) qualification is part of the federal government ’ s high achieving teachers program and , as such , the program is “ diligent and rigorous ” in selecting a cohort of students . The La Trobe academic also emphasises the strong social justice element , aiming to place beginning teachers in traditionally hard-to-staff secondary schools in low SES areas and students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds .
One of the bonuses of the program , which is also supported by the Victorian government , is that the students are paid while they are studying – a huge relief for any student . And while the program has been kept deliberately small in its initial phase ( roughly 30 students are accepted currently ), Lampert believes it could be “ ready for some growth ”.
CR : How is the course structured ? Is it a Bachelors or a Masters , and why is it unique in Australia ? JL : Nexus is a Masters of Teaching Secondary . It ’ s delivered as part of the federal government ’ s High Achieving Teachers Program and it ’ s also supported by the Victorian Department of Education . It ’ s a social justice teacher education program designed to prepare secondary teachers to work in what you might call hard-to-staff secondary schools – those that are in low SES areas or meet the needs of culturally diverse kids , both in metropolitan Melbourne and also in regional Victoria .
What was the genesis of the program ? How and why did it come about ? I ’ ve actually been running this kind of program for a very long time . I ran a somewhat similar program in Queensland for about 10 years and then moved down to La Trobe several years ago .
What I love about the program , and what I feel committed to , is its social justice element . Nexus does have an employmentbased aspect . Participants in Nexus get paid part-time in their first year of study , and then they gain permission to teach and take their own class as a paraprofessional in the second year of their study . But the main point of it is to prepare social justiceoriented teachers who really understand the communities they ’ re teaching in , are passionate about them and wherever possible come from those communities themselves .
What do you anticipate in terms of enrolments next year ? We ’ re actually moving into our third cohort . The first cohort , about 30 of them , are graduating and the second cohort are halfway through , so they ’ re just at the stage where they ’ re getting that permission to teach and they ’ re in schools , and now we ’ re recruiting for the third cohort .
In each case we ’ re looking for 30-plus appropriate participants to go through the program . We ’ re really quite diligent and rigorous in terms of selecting people
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