5 minute read
Kingswood College
Principal Elisabeth Lenders
Elisabeth Lenders joined the college as Principal in 2011 and she has a genuine passion for nurturing the strengths and talents of each individual to achieve their personal best. She is also the Chair of the Council for Strategic Education. 355 Station Street, Box Hill VIC 3128
Kingswood College is rethinking education for a brighter future. The world has changed beyond imagination. We believe it’s time to transform education too. We can’t keep educating using an outdated 19th-century model as our base. After all, nothing is more important than your child’s education. At Kingswood College we’re not waiting for the future to arrive. We’re shaping our own – for the benefit of all our students. That’s why we’ve developed an inspiring new approach to learning called the Kingswood Future Learning model.
Developed from extensive research, Future Learning promotes an array of cross-curricular skills in a hands-on learning environment.
School days now look and sound different, with no bells and a much more flexible timetable. The traditional school uniform has been replaced with active wear and each day involves physical activity.
Future Learning removes existing barriers to education and expands traditional classroom structures with collaborative, project-based learning using proven strategies. Our teachers mentor students, closely monitoring their progress and growth at a personal level so they can go out into the world with confidence.
We’d love to meet you on a School Tour, so you can discover the Kingswood College difference for yourself.
THE BASICS
Enquiries
+61 3 9896 1700 kingswoodcollege.vic.edu.au kwc@kingswoodcollege.vic. edu.au
Years
ELC – Year 12
Denomination Uniting Church
Gender
Co-educational
Fees
Year 7: $24,336; Year 12: $27,376
Boarding \ No
Scholarships \ Yes
ATAR \ Median 85.15*
* Results are provided by the school, Domain does not warrant their accuracy
LATTICE
Learning And Teaching Through Innovation, Collaboration and Engagement. LATTICE is a leading edge curriculum framework developed by Kingswood College. It is a whole new way of teaching and learning for life in the 21st century.
INNOVATION
Our students live in a fastchanging, borderless world – so they need a contemporary, futuresfocused education. Innovation is more than just improving education, it can help create a learning environment that challenges and inspires.
COLLABORATION
Collaboration is a powerful tool that shares wisdom, solves problems and helps build a community of caring learners. Collaboration creates an environment that maximises our students’ individual and collective potential to achieve.
ENGAGEMENT
Engagement is about winning hearts and minds – ensuring that students understand the purposes of their learning, and their application to the real world. We empower our students through teaching them about how they learn and they love it!
BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS & COMMUNITY
A key lesson from the lockdowns of 2020 was that resilience can be learned.
BY JESS GABITES
ADAPTABLE AND AGILE MINDSET
The challenges of 2020 have helped nurture resilient students and taught valuable lessons in how to be adaptable and creative.
“Living and learning through a global pandemic required a whole new level of adaptability,” says Diana Vernon, Principal of Methodist Ladies’ College in Kew. “Teaching is all about building relationships with the students in your class and, suddenly, to find yourself engaging with a computer screen is enormously challenging.
When Melbourne went into its first lockdown in March 2020, school campuses were shuttered and teaching moved online. It was a challenging and unprecedented time for teachers, students and their families as they were forced to navigate a new way of learning.
Despite the difficulties, many lessons were learned. New-found resilience, flexibility and creativity were just some of the takeaways, which are now helping students and teachers navigate a new school year.
Vernon says that, among other things, 2020 reinforced the school’s strong relationships across the college community and the importance of established information technology systems.
A focus on sustaining engagement through classes, departments, teams and community online events meant the school community remained connected in a meaningful way.
“Relationships are a key focus for learning at MLC, and our experience over the year reinforced the strength of the relationships that we have across the entire community,” she says.
“Additionally, the technological systems we already had in place through Microsoft Teams, class OneNotes and our learning management system meant that our staff and students made the
shift to online delivery very swiftly and very successfully.”
To support student wellbeing, as an integral element of good learning, the school, which has approximately 2000 students, developed the MLC Continuous Learning and Wellbeing Program.
The program included scheduled timetables, albeit with shortened live lessons and increased break times.
Feedback from students and families helped the school to refine its online learning program.
For year 12 student Ally Spain, online learning had its benefits, including the chance to try different co-curricular activities online.
“Online learning gave me an opportunity to discover more about myself as a learner, and I gained a lot of resilience – I had to,” she says. “One of the biggest positives for online learning was gaining more confidence in asking questions because it was easier and not as much pressure as asking them in front of a class.
Vernon believes 2020 gave students authentic learning experiences in being resilient and responding to changing circumstances.
“I was particularly proud of the way that so many of our students responded to disappointment, thinking creatively and being positive to ensure that the online alternative to whatever event was cancelled was memorable and engaging.
community.’
DIANA VERNON
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
