Principal: Michelle Bickley-Miller School: Koroit and District Primary School

Opening our eyes

What happened: We all agreed that we needed to build up the knowledge, appreciation and understanding of Asia with our students and families. However, the starting point, where we all shared our existing knowledge revealed that we needed to build our own knowledge and understanding.

Staff travel to Asia was common but generally limited to the resorts of Asia and knowledge was surface level (generally) We set about accessing resources and this is a journey of learning that needs to continue.

This didn’t mean that we couldn’t learn along with the students and so began the opportunities to immerse ourselves in film, stories, art and fact finding exercises. We all agreed we didn’t want to deliver units that were superficial and so when we planned units we tried to have inquiry questions that linked to broader concepts of “change’. ‘sustainability’ and ‘diversity’. We have come some way to achieving more powerful units of Asian inquiry, however we also acknowledge that we can build on this start to achieve deeper learning.

As our school community is predominantly mono-cultural (our first Asian student was enrolled in 2011) we also knew that we would need to connect with our school community in understanding the Asian priority. School council have been easy as they were convinced after seeing the dvd provided by Engage with Asia and they readily agreed to developing a draft Engage with Asia policy. The ICT professional learning provided great impetus to the journey. The teachers developed blogs and from this the students have become really engaged in the learning and the parents have accessed their students learning and investigations via these. We regularly remind parents of the blogs in the newsletter and the response is great from those who access them. Similarly the days at the zoo really stimulated the teachers into making powerful connections between Asian studies and sustainability. The students really came on board from with this work and are committed to saving animals and their environments. The Asian elephant is close to their hearts now. After a teacher spent two weeks at Thai orphanage, she ignited the passion in the students with stories and sharing the artefacts she brought back and the students explored the origins of these arts and crafts.

While we know that focussing on food can be token learning, we also know that it is a significant ‘hook’ into engaging students and their parents into another culture. Hence each level of the school prepared a ‘Tasting day” where the students created authentic dishes with all fresh ingredients for themselves and their families to taste. It was an amazing day very able helped by our one Thai parent. She is a legend on the eyes of the community after this event. The students also shared their learning about the four cultures represented in the tasting day: Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and India. The ART teacher paralleled the studies with ART explorations of each culture. Our school looked amazing and there is a positive feel about Asian awareness. The Melbourne trip was also significant as our students have limited opportunity to even see Asian people and a walk through Asian precincts in Melbourne was enlightening. Our journey has only just begun but we feel we can make a difference for our students.

Based on materials from Jessica Dart & Rick Davies – Clear Horizon Consulting – Most Significant Change Model. Why did you choose this particular change? Why was it significant?

TO BUILD UP KNOWLEDGE. WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE WE CAN”T HAVE UNDERSTANDING?

Based on materials from Jessica Dart & Rick Davies – Clear Horizon Consulting – Most Significant Change Model.