Number 196 Connect August 2012 supporting student participation ABN: 98 174 663 341 Students: Partners in Building Schools • What it means to have a voice ...: An SRC in a Special Developmental School • What makes learning stimulating?: Resources: Surveying student views at Balwyn HS • Scoop.it • The long and short of it ... from 21 Student Councils • StuVoice.org • An eff ective SRC - activity • VISTA: Turning ideas into action • NAB Schools First Student Award • VicSRC: Congress 2012; New Executive; An eff ective SRC • UK Student Council: Dukeries College • Student Councils and Beyond online • NSW State SRC: Representing: 25 Years On at State Conference • Connect from print to digital in 2013 Print Post Approved: PP 340646/0008 ISSN 0158-4995 $4.00 Connect Number 196: August 2012 Thishe last month Issue: has been dominated for me by attendance 3 What it means to have a voice: Tat major peak SRC conferences in SRC in a Special Developmental School Meg Steele two states - Victoria and New South 6 Connect 2013: from print to digital Roger Holdsworth Wales. I was fortunate to be the U 7 What makes learning stimulating? keynote speaker at the latter State Surveying student views at Balwyn HS Carl Wu, Jonathan Heard SRC Conference, where students were seriously 9 Connection and IMPACT: Forest Hill College Natalie Pantou looking at the role and practice of Student Councils. 10 SRC strategic planning: And so, under the heading: Representation ... Participation Education Week at Warracknabeal SC Wendy Hewitt, Ashlee Schultz ... Are You Serious!!?, I was able to continue the challenge to the 11 Integrated and supported: Frankston HS Tim Eric students about being serious in their roles as partners in school 13 All students have much to say: decision-making. When I got to the Conference from Adelaide (see Nossal High School Levi Barker, Hasini Ilangaratne below) the students had already been discussing and debating 14 Democratic and representative: their SRCs’ eff ectiveness in groups looking at: ‘what do SRCs Narre Warren South P-12 College School Captains 2012 spend their time doing?’, ‘who do SRCs represent?’, ‘how do SRCs 15 Shaping our school community: connect to school decision-making?’, ‘how are SRCs recognised Lowther Hall Anglican Grammar School Lucy Kingsley within schools?’ and ‘how effi cient and eff ective are SRCs?’. So we started by hearing reports from these discussion groups, and 17 An eff ective SRC: an activity Kate Walsh then I built on that, with ideas drawn from the practices of other 18 What we think is signifi cant: SRC snapshots schools around Australia - where students are on School Councils 20 VicSRC: SRC Recognition Awards Winners; VicSRC Executive and Boards, with voting rights; where students take part in teacher 2012-13; Congress: Hearing the voice of students Justine Jaramillo selection panels; where student initiate curriculum discussions 22 VISTA: Turning ideas into action Scott Duncan, VISTA with teachers and parents; where SRC activities and learning is 23 NSW SRC Conference: Representing 25 Years On recognised as part of the school curriculum. 24 Our Student Council: Dukeries College, UK The same ideas then wove through the VicSRC Annual 25 News & Reviews: 2012 NAB Schools First Student Award Congress a few days later. Students worked in inter-school teams winners; Scoop.it on Student Voice; StuVoice.org; to discuss aspects of what their ideal schools might be like, and Student Councils and Beyond on-line then built models of such schools to inspire their action planning 26 Connect Publications: Order Form Connect for the next year (see the photo on the front cover). 27 CLEARINGHOUSE: Local and Overseas Publications; The same ideas also resonated with a workshop earlier in the Friends of Connect; Websites; Contribute to Connect week in Adelaide, where I worked with a group of experienced teachers to explore implications of the ‘General Capabilities’ within the Australian Curriculum. This area may have received Cover: less attention than the subject designs but, we agreed, these capabilities should be at the centre, the core, of the Australian Constructing an ideal school at the VicSRC Congress Curriculum – not marginal to it. These capabilities inherit directions from Values Education and from Civics and Citizenship Education; Why does Connect exist?exist? they underpin the whole curriculum: ‘intercultural understanding’, ‘ethical behaviour’, ‘personal and social capability’, ‘critical and Connect has been creative thinking’, as well as ‘ICT capability’, ‘literacy’ and ‘numeracy’. published bi-monthly since 1979. And they all encompass the aim of developing a ‘successful learner, It aims to: confi dent and creative individual and active and informed citizen’. • document student participation So we focused on the overwhelming relevance and importance of approaches and initiatives; active, participatory approaches for students within schools and • support reflective practices; within classrooms to these objectives. I suspect that this area will • develop and share resources. become even more important in the next few years. At the state SRC conferences and in the reports from individual schools (the ones in this issue are drawn from applications by Connect: students for the Victorian SRC Recognition Awards), we see both ABN: 98 174 663 341 Connect is edited and published by: Roger Holdsworth great hopes for developing active and informed citizens, but also 12 Brooke Street, Northcote 3070 Victoria Australia the challenges in stimulating and enabling authentic practice. Ph: (03) 9489 9052; Fax: (03) 8344 9632 Roger Holdsworth E-mail: [email protected] Connect acknowledges the support of the Australian Youth Research Centre, Next Issue: #197: October 2012 Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne Deadline for material: end of September, 2012 2 Connect 196: Broadmeadows Special Developmental School, Vic What it means to have a voice ... SRC in the SDS n 2009, when asked to choose a position of responsibility to take over place of employment: Broadmeadows upon commencing a teaching job at a new school, I put my hand Special Developmental School (SDS). up to co-ordinate the school’s Student Representative Council. As a Although it was going to be a busy year, I with the support of my bosses, I decided to new staff member teaching in the junior section of the school, I naïvely implement an SRC at Broadmeadows SDS. thought it would help me build better relationships with students It was one thing to envisage running across the school and consequently (... it embarrasses me to say it ...) a meeting with students from a special make my twice weekly yard duty in the senior playground easier to school, but those at an SDS all have manage! Little did I know it would become the most enjoyable and a moderate to profound intellectual engaging aspect of my teaching career, and spur a future life-long disability, all have some form of investigation into what it really means to have a voice. communication impairment, and many are non-verbal. Yet it was, and is, my belief You see, it wasn’t just any run of the successes. Luckily for me, the culture that all have a voice: it’s just that it can be mill SRC – this was the SRC for students of the SRC was deeply embedded at tricky at times to hear it. with a mild intellectual disability who Croxton and, to the other staff there, Carrington and Robinson (2006) attended Croxton Special School. there was nothing strange at all about specify ‘four guiding principles to As I hadn’t been at the school bringing a group of students into the support the development of a more previously, I had no expectations and conference room once a week to meet. inclusive school community’ (p 326). no guidelines about what my role I learnt many valuable lessons during In addition to teachers developing should entail, so I set about making it this year, and the speech made by one learning communities, engaging in up, using what I knew from therapy of the student leaders at the end of year continual professional development, and (music therapy to be exact) and about presentation night summed up why this eff ectively collaborating with parents, building relationships with students and is such a worthwhile role. they suggest that schools need to ‘engage developing their self-esteem and voice In 2010 I decided to return to study students as citizens in school review and at the background of my work. It was a my Masters in Education, and for this development’ (Carrington & Robinson year of trial and error, and many, many reason took up a part-time job at an old 2006: 326). Furthermore, contemporary SRC 2012: Getting their badges at assembly August 2012 3 educational research suggests that hello to the person sitting next to them, A visual schedule that we use developing student voice should be an and we always end by standing in a integral part of the curriculum (Manefi eld circle, putting one hand in the middle et al, 2007). I have been privileged to and saying ‘SRC!!!’ on the count of 3 explore these concepts further and to celebrate our hard work, just like a what it means to my teaching practice basketball team. through my involvement in Student What comes in between varies but I Representative Councils, or SRCs. have a visual schedule showing students While staff were initially confused the order of proceedings... starting with about what the point of the SRC was and the hello song and ending with the ‘any is, and some wondered why I wanted other ideas?’ picture in which students to have a cross-section of the school can off er a new idea for discussion. represented (“but she can’t talk” or “but One huge off shoot from SRC his behaviour is so challenging”) I always meetings has been a greater sense of felt supported by school management, camaraderie between students across and now, half way into the third year of the diff erent sections of the school and Broadmeadows SDS’ SRC, it has become with diff ering abilities, and increased a strong and steady part of the school incidences of more able students culture.