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School Review Q&A

School Review Q&A

YLead

Project

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For many years, Ave Maria College have worked with yLead to provide enhanced learning experiences for our student leaders.

YLead are an Australian organisation who offer a wide range of leadership and positive education programs for students of all ages and abilities. YLead create unique learning experiences by demonstrating that everyone can make a positive contribution to their school community.

At the beginning of each year, yLead run a Senior Leadership Team Formation over two days with all Year 12 student leaders. This provides a worthwhile opportunity for senior leaders to prepare for their final year of schooling, bond as a leadership group and reflect on their highschool journey so far.

So far, the first two yLead sessions in Term 1 and Term 2 have been a great success. Students worked together and independently to develop their own leadership strengths and abilities. Students collaborated to devise initiatives that would improve the College, and they pitched these ideas to Principal Ms Hutton when she visited the seminar.

Rockit

The College has engaged PROJECT ROCKIT to provide workshops for our students regularly over the last few years as a great resource on year level Wellbeing Days.

PROJECT ROCKIT creates spaces where all young people have access to respect, acceptance, creative expression and real leadership skills. They send highly trained, passionate young presenters into schools to run workshops that empower students to lead positive change at school, online and beyond.

This year’s Year 8 Wellbeing Day involved three PROJECT ROCKIT sessions exploring the risks and rewards of challenging bullying, building peer support in online spaces, challenging judgement and social labels, and, launch strategies to stand up for yourself and others. The sessions were a great way to inform students all about the social factors and drivers that often spill online: standing out versus fitting in, relationship ethics, privacy, consent and celebrating diversity.

Data and GrowthTeam

The College prides itself on its innovative and forwardthinking approach to learning and teaching, which requires being across current and emerging trends in education. With a recent focus on data driven and data informed practice the implementation of a Data and Growth Team in 2022 ensures we are thinking more critically, analytically, and creatively about how data can be used to enhance teaching practice and school operations.

Meeting fortnightly, the Data and Growth Team is led by Jo Hammer (Assistant Principal Community and Growth), working with Kate De Bolfo (Horizons Leaders), Adam Hipwell (Data Literacy for Learning Leader and Acting Leader of Pedagogy) and Sharon Walsh (Digital Learning Leader).

A key project for this team includes developoing a customized ‘DASH’ data dashboard project which has been developed in partnership with Professor Fang Chen from the University of Sydney and ACER Australia.

This year, Ave Maria College began an ongoing partnership program with Real Schools, an organisation that exists to build partnerships and experiences to help schools achieve their potential in three key areas. These areas include committed teachers, caring students and connected communities.

Officially introduced to staff at a Professional Learning (PL) Day in March, we heard from Cassie Kitani, Associate Director of School Partnerships at Real Schools about three core ideas to focus on working with young people. Cassie broke down these ideas around Pedagogical Learning and Shame, Restorative Practices and Human Brain Human Behaviours.

After this informative PL, it has been great to see all staff make an effort in implementing thoughtful practices around listening to the needs of students and trying to understand their experiences and make the most of their schooling.

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