Great Scot April 2019 Great Scot_156_April_2019_Online | Page 11

of influence
make the School all it can be for each boy and the
community it serves.
With continuing realisation of the masterplan and
its place in our educational strategy, 2019 will see the
completion of the new Keon-Cohen Cafeteria/Dining
Hall and surrounding Student Precinct, forming a
home for boys and a marketplace of conversation
and engagement. To similar effect for Old Boys, new
homes for Archives and OSCA will be established
along Morrison Street. Forward momentum will
continue with initial works to replace the ‘Back Blocks’
of School and McMeckan Houses with new boarders’
and staff accommodation, and to establish a Parent/
Welcome Centre in the heart of the Hill, while plans
to surround the new Student Precinct with Home
Rooms for each House take more concrete form.
Under the leadership of Head of Middle School,
Katrina Stalker, we will embed our new Middle
School structure of Operations, Transition and 17
Form Teachers as the first point of contact for boys,
parents and staff. With direction from Dr Peter Coutis
(Director of Research, Teaching and Learning), we
will launch the Teacher Action Research and Career
Development Programme across both Senior and
Junior Schools to entrench professional research,
collaboration and personal development in the practice
of our School.
Initiatives in the Junior School include embedding
the use of technology in the curriculum and classroom,
and the new one-to-one iPad Programme across
Years 4, 5 and 6. There will be further work around
the theme, ‘Developing Curiosity and Creativity’,
blending science, technology and mathematics in boys’
learning, and a review of the House and Peer Support
Programmes.
Seeking to break the shackles of the mandated
curriculum, blunt the unwieldly instrument of age
level classification and provide greater opportunity for
teachers to share — and boys to explore — passions,
this year sees the launch of the Cross Age Elective pilot
in Years 9 and 10. Whilst across the Senior School,
restructuring of the oversight and management of
School Operations (those matters beyond ‘routine’
care and delivery of curricula) gathers pace, with the
creation of new roles at Middle School, Upper School
and Senior School levels.
The year will see the implementation of a new
Drugs Programme across Years 7-12 that has been
developed by School Psychologists, Nick Clark and
Lara Silkoff. The emphasis of the programme is to help
boys make informed and safe decisions, particularly
relating to alcohol, cannabis and other drugs of
dependence, gaming, gambling and other addictions
associated with electronic devices, and partying.
We will advance the good works of the Respectful
Relations Programme, continue to develop the use
of young Old Boys as academic mentors working
alongside teachers, roll out a new school-wide
Learning Management System (CANVAS) and host
an International Boys’ Schools Coalition regional
conference.
In addition, in all we do, we will continue, with
strong voice, to embed our foundational teaching and
learning principle: The inherent dignity and value of
each person; and our foundational teaching and learning
question: How did the world evolve to be as it is and how
might it be made to evolve for the greater good?
The authority of voice, the bonds built through
conversation and the far reaching implications of its
absence, or regulation, were powerfully put in an
observation by Paul Hasluck (later Sir Paul Meernaa
Caedwalla Hasluck, KG, GCMG, GCVO, 17th
Governor-General of Australia) following tours of
north-west Australia in the 1930s, that not one non-
Indigenous person had been found who could speak
an Indigenous language.
As Sir Paul suggested, shared voice and the
language on which it is premised, is a necessary
condition for an equality built upon respect for
the value and dignity of each person. Perhaps for
sufficiency in a world of instant and ubiquitous
connection, where qualification, logic and experience
borne of time in the field can be ransomed by modern
day snake-oil sellers promising easy, quick solutions,
it is wise to add Joseph Campbell’s advice, to listen
when someone is speaking, not to the words, but to
what is talking. That, in the absence of open-minded
discourse, the lived environment contracts and in the
ensuing echo chamber the only voice heard is our own.
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